


The Book Of Sermons

by TheSkullontheMantlepiece



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Childhood Trauma, Crime Scenes, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Holmes Siblings, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidlock, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Overcoming Trauma, Past Drug Addiction, Poor Victor, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Therapy, This is a happy story I swear, Violence, in the end love conquers all, john and sherlock have a very healthy relationship, s4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:26:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkullontheMantlepiece/pseuds/TheSkullontheMantlepiece
Summary: They waited until John could say it without raising his voice.“She doesn’t scare me because she didn’t abuse me.”“She killed your therapist and put you down a hole.”“And now I have a nice new therapist that helps me talk about that. Who do you talk to about what she did to you?” John asked.Sherlock scoffed. “It’s not a competition.”“And yet somehow you’re always last place.”-After The Final Problem: Rosie and John are back in Baker Street, Sherlock and John are Together, Eurus Holmes is alive, Victor Trevor is dead, and Sherlock must try to survive the flood.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 35
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

_“A Book of History is a Book of Sermons"_

**_\- Arthur Conan Doyle \- _ **

**PROLOGUE:**

Victor Trevor and William-Sherlock-Scott-Holmes met beneath the Old Beech Tree.

Despite the tragedy that followed, the Tree remembered it fondly.

It was like watching the buds of spring arrive. Two dewdrop boys. The Trevor child was a touch sturdier, ruddy in cheek and hair, copper curls behind his ears, soil on his knuckles — middling, merry, and bright.

The Holmes child was meek in comparison, prone to looking starved of sunlight.

William, Pale child. Moon child. His elbows knocked and his knees squabbled. He had milk-puddle eyes that drank in everything and a mouth that spilled it all back out again. He tickled the Old Beech Tree with pebbles and badgered the bushes and grew too fond of the leaves he kept for his pockets. He was raggedy — there were rips in his jumper where he chewed it at night and ran it through thorns in the morning.

He was as much a feature of the field as the shrubs, baffling to the neighbours and more interested in the outdoors. Odd with no instinct yet to act otherwise. So he was banished from company.

Except in the valley of the Old Beech Tree, where his boisterous games were permitted by a patient garden.

And then, Victor.

Victor Trevor was new to town, but had quickly learnt that escaping his homework was possible by way of limpness of the latch on the garden gate. The rust there stained his hands when he wriggled his way out, and wandered down the meadow where his mother wouldn't stray.

On that first day, he was making use of the stolen time by reading from his favourite book.

The grass was warm on his belly. There was a dragonfly hovering by his left ear, and he was happy there, laying in his murderers path.

William Holmes came trundling over the horizon in navy wellingtons. At the apex of the hill, he looked down the path as Victor glanced up.

They squinted through the glare of the sunshine at each other with a passing feeling that sometimes occurs once or twice in a typical life. This feeling has no name but is similar to but not quite ‘recognition’. It tends to sit in the belly and produce a high ringing in the ears, for both parties. If this feeling happens to you when you are both adults, it will likely be disregarded as a symptom of ill-advised enthusiasm, a flawed passing whim like swimming straight after breakfast or shaving the tip of your eyebrow off. If you are young and you encounter this feeling like recognition, you will find it harder to forget but easier to dismiss - just call it childhood fancy.

William and Victor looked at each other. Then William broke into a run. His outline grew and grew until he was skidding towards and then past Victor in a few rapid strides. His heavy boots skidded across in the dirt and drew up hazy clouds of dust. A small clump of earth caught the corner of victor’s eye, where he sat, paralysed.

He cleared his throat gently and blinked the water from his eyes. “Hey” he said. It was meant in a ‘hey-please-do-not-kick-the-dirt-at-me’ way, but somewhere along the line it got confused and ended up spoken in the way of a hello. Before Victor could become too embarrassed about this there came a prim

“Lo,” in return.

Dusty, distracted, and scandalised, Victor Trevor looked about him with his mouth open. “Hello?” he said, in wonder.

“Hello. Again.” the voice replied.

Victor noticed the wellies dangling a short distance away over his shoulder. He looked up, and found two pale skinny legs of which the Wellies dangled off of, and these pale legs which led further up and were in fact attached to a body in an red puffer jacket and a pale face at the top of that — all of which equalled a boy sat astride the biggest branch of the Old Beech Tree, watching Victor who stood down below. The boy in the tree said,

“That’s not your book.”

Victor said “What?”

“It looks very old, and you’re not. Who lent it?”

Victor frowned and looked down at the dog-eared copy of his novel. It lay in the grass, the gold print of the name Robert Louis Stevenson catching the sun and winking. Henry Trevor’s old school insignia on the spine was faded from time and handling, but still visible.

“It’s Treasure Island, it’s Daddy’s favourite and mine too. You know it?” he asked, standing and leaning his elbows against the trunk of the tree, face upturned.

The boys details were blurred between the leaves and fragmentary by the dappled light. From where Victor was stood, William’s dark curls resembled a bird nest, his eyes two blue specked eggs, wide and brittle, blink blink blinking down from on high.

“Yes. Well. No”, William said, stuttering.

Victor smiled gently like his mother. ‘Right” he said, “what’s your name?”

The branch quivered as the other boy shook his head. “William”, William said, and shook his head once more, ‘William. I haven’t read it but I know Treasure Island because it’s on a shelf in the drawing room at home and I know the names of all the books on that shelf. So I was not fibbing. I don’t fib. If your name isn't Henry Trevor then what is it?”

“Victor,” he said.

“You should climb up here Victor,” William said, and shook his left wellie at him urgently.

“Why?, Victor said, smiling brightly at William from the ground.

Two blue egg-shell eyes, too big for the face they came in, blinked.

“It’s a good hiding place,” William said solemnly.

And what was a boy to do with such a stellar invitation but go?

Halfway up Victor nearly slipped, scraping his side against the coarse bark as his ankle caved in the air above a snapped branch. William’s hand shot out of the shadow and held tight to the collar of Victor’s polo shirt, yanking him to the left until his footing rebalanced elsewhere. Victor closed his eyes and breathed through his nerves, inhaling the damp fragrance of the moss. William’s knuckles brushed the bottom of his chin as he tightened his hold on Victor.

The leaves and the bracken at the base of the tree had formed a dome-like enclave around the branches and in this strange green space Victor could only hear the rocking-chair creak of the tree in the wind and the snick of the insects and the sound of giggling as he heaved himself finally, breathless, pleased, onto the bough beside William.

They sat quiet for a while, smiling at each other and at the secret of it, as their socks and the tips of their ears grew damp in the thick, waterlogged air.

After a minute, Victor said “Who are you hiding fro-” and William shushed him and grinned and tapped the side of his nose with one finger. There was a bandage around it, haphazardly wrapped.

Acting on compulsion, Victor touched his fingertip to William’s where it poked out from the thick plaster. William’s smile dropped as he looked at their joint hands in the space between them. Victor almost felt bad until William sniffed and pressed back against Victor’s finger, a formal expression on his face.

A contract, it seemed, was then passed. An agreement of companionship was drawn and signed. The Beech Tree nodded its agreement by way of a slight bow under the breeze and the boys scrambled for purchase on the top branch, bouts of shrill laughter interspersed with tittering threats to silence each other.

The thing about a hiding place is that it’s only ever as subtle as the person inside it. 

The boys passed the time with quiet conversation. Whispering only when they could be bothered.

Eventually the moths and the wetflys swung in under the evening sky and drifted over the boys heads as they pulled charade faces of gawking terror and elbowed each others knees. The Beech tree harnessed the last of the amber light, casting Victor’s hair into fire and William’s pale forehead to a mellow tangerine. After that, they grew loose and restless.

“I don’t think anyone is coming” Victor said. 

“Shush!”

“but I’m the lookout!”

“But I’m Captain,” William said, face set and serious, “and I say it's safer up here.”

For the first time since that afternoon, the thought occurred to Victor that the thing William had been running from was worse than arithmetic homework. He turned away from the gap in the dense green and the hazy, half formed view of the pathway the lead down out of the field. He looked to William, browns knitted in thought.

“Has someone been mean?” Victor asked, quietly.

William’s eyes were down on the meadow. But at the question he crooked his head in consideration, black curls bobbing and catching on the twigs. Victor waited but his new friend stilled and said nothing.

When Henry Trevor returned from work, he was known to sweep Victor up into his broad chest and swoop him around the length of the living room. They would play that the carpet was the belly of a beast, or an open fire or a whirlpool of dark, cold water. Though it was just a laugh, when Pa tipped him upside down so that the blood pounded molten hot into his beaming cheeks, and his hair brushed the floor, Victor would fall squealing into unrestrainedimagination. For just one moment, he would be hooked on the terrifying, exhilarating certainty that below, beneath his Pa’s embrace, lay danger.

There was something to that feeling, something similar in the way William watched over the horizon. Something terrible and exciting. In the tight, bruising grip with which William had clutched at Victor’s collar and Victor’s hand and the bough between their knees. In the stark shadow of purple and grey below his eyes that Victor could see now from so close-up.

His chest told him that he did not want to let his friends feet touch the ground tonight. Below lay monsters.

“How come you were running?” he asked.

The curls bobbed again, thinking. This time he answered.

“To be faster” said William. 

“Faster than who?” said Victor.

A rustle below turned his heads, and there, on the path, stood a boy and a girl. The leaves bristled.

Victor’s breath froze in his throat and he heard William’s do the same.

The boy and the girl were stood directly below the tree, having moved to the end of lane with an efficiency and quiet that baffled Victor even as he guilty remembered distracting William with questions. Some lookout he was.

“Look,” he started but William stopped him with a hand over his mouth. The bandage on his finger scratched at Victor’s cheek.

The boy below lent his shoulder against the tree, crossing one ankle over the other. He was large, and tall, much taller than the girl, who reached a spritely half-way up the boy’s leg and stood two feet behind, staring blankly up at the shadows where William and Victor crouched.

Without raising his chin, the boy said “Mummy says we’re to come back with you, or not at all. You can imagine my dilemna.”

The girl said nothing, only stared. Victor watched the ribbons in her hair toss and twitch in the wind, around such a still, pale face, and felt his stomach swoop like he was falling away from William out of the tree.

William squeezed his hand, minutely, once, applying pressure but not hurting Victor’s jaw. A press of confidence. _This place is ours._

“Come on William, you know how it goes, you either cut this short or upset Mummy and be shut inside for a week. Then who would your chum play with?” The tall boy’s tone was brisk.

The girl still didn’t make a sound. But she made a slight movement, behind the boy's back, and Victor watched, feeling stuck. 

He watched as she slowly lifted her right hand to her chest. With exaggerated movements, she bent her forefinger back and back, tendons straining, looking at him as she did. Her pallid mouth flickered up in a smirk.

Victor felt William’s palm dampen, felt the pulse jack-hammer through the thin skin of his wrist, felt the bandage on William’s finger.

A terrible and adult knowledge bloomed briefly in Victor’s head before disappearing, falling gracefully silent in the clamour of all the love and tenderness and laughter he had ever been taught in his own home, and still, thankfully, if a little more precariously, expected of everyone.

He tried to mock the nagging of the voice below with a dash of his eyes William’s way, but his new friend was busy chewing on his sleeve, pupils large with the changing light and flickering to Victor, then down to the top of the tall boy’s head - back and forth, back and forth, buzzing, a mayfly dance.

“Chop chop, little brother”.

Victor hated these children that were so rude and were equal parts intruding on and deepening his knowledge of William.

The girl was smiling blankly at the swish of William’s wellington’s in the cooling air.

William drew his hand back with a jerk from Victor’s face, leaving behind an imprint of dirt and the unique smell of detergent and rind from the fibres of his jumper. His voice was as forlorn as Victor felt when he whispered, “I have to go now.”

Take me with you, every day, wherever you go, Victor wanted to say. Instead he said, “Take my book with you if you like”.

William’s head cocked, “but we have a copy” he said.

“I know, just, if you take mine, it will be a borrow, and - ”

“I’ll have to bring it back to you” William finished in a rush.

“So, I’ll see you soon then,” Victor said.

“Yes, soon.” William smiled.

Their voices were so low, the harrumph of the tall boy’s voice was high and sharp, neatly slicing right though their goodbye.

William rolled his eyes, and as Victor giggled, he slid sideways from the branch with an exaggerated sigh. His spindly fingers caught him in a dangle, keeping the the short span of his body hanging barely at the edge of the bough as Victor and the other boy gasped in unison. The girl stayed quiet, but watched intently.

Then a wave, William’s left hand releasing in answer to Victor’s gesture of goodbye - that had him finally let himself drop the rest of the way to the grass with a satisfying thump.

Victor held tight to the tree and watched as William dashed ahead of his siblings, filling their eery silence with the clamour of damp plants against his bare shins and the huff of his breath as he reached the Trevor’s _treasure island_ and slipped it under his arm before darting ahead down the lane, back home. The boy and girl walked in a solemn, slower, row far behind him. It pleased Victor to watch his friend keep ahead of them, all the way until his form was swallowed past the lip of the horizon into some murky silhouette, then a blot, then nothing. When the other children were gone, all that was left was the young Trevor boy, picking at a scab on his own knee musingly in the suddenly still and breathless remains of the day.

The tree insulated him well enough from the cold throughput the cycle of his thoughts. Eventually all of it; William's face, William's poor finger, his Pa's book under William's arm, the evening of captaining a restless tree, the little girl's terribly, briefly bent fingers, and the last trod of wellingtons on the mulch all over the adultness territory of the land -- spun and half dissipated in his head like a souring dream.

Then his mother’s voice rang out over the hill, and Victor let the ground rise up and pluck him from the tree, and strolled home to her. She was waiting at the garden gate, apron dotted with brambles. He ran into her arms and told her of everything but the girl, because he didn't want to recall that bit again. Then he drank a glass of milk and burrowed into bed. Under the blanket he lay thinking of treasure maps, and waiting for the new day with his new friend to rush in at the other end of the night.

\---

Sherlock woke with his head halfway under the pillow and Rosie’s tearful face pressed against his shoulder.

He drew in a sharp breath and rose onto his haunches, Rosie’s head slipping miserably down his arm and onto the mattress with a plop. She’d got her mitts on the blanket and yanked it off him in a bid for attention, but John had somehow kept a stubborn hold of his half and was dozing with a bundle of sheet under his chin and nought but a slight pinch to his brows. _Army reflexes_ Sherlock thought fondly, and smoothed out the crease of John’s forehead with his thumb before turning to Rosie.

“No rest for the wicked, dearest,” he said, voice crackling with disuse and fatigue. He sat up at the edge of the bed and pulled her up to his lap in one movement. She didn't bat an eye at the brief flight, used to being handled and doted on by a willow of a man all of her short life. “Ba,” she muttered, damply, onto the crook of his neck, one tiny hand pawing at his sleepshirt, two soft fat feet balanced assuredly on each of Sherlock’s shins.

“Ba indeed, what an idea Watson, counting sheep would be an excellent solution.”

Down the stairs to her bedroom — de-cluttered and de-toxified in one long sweet weekend the evening after he and John had agreed they’d take to the room at the top of 221B. The living room was almost all shadow, drips and drabs of sunrise proving riveting to Rosie, who wriggled a bit in Sherlock’s grip, chasing squares of insipid light where she caught sight of them on the arm of the sofa and the mantlepiece. Sherlock picked his way over a smattering of alphabet blocks and side stepped the kitchen table with ease, long fingers grasping the span of her head to keep it steady. Her door was yellow, stained with the leftovers of the can that returned the smile to the wall above the couch amid all the other renovations. He pushed it open with his left shoulder and padded across the carpet to her cot.

“How many hypothetical sheep?” he whispered, tucking her gently under the blanket.

She blinked up at him, eyes shining out of the dark.

“As many as we can count”, he said.

He settled with his bare back against the bed, safety bars up and cool against the scars over his spine, each of them always tender in the earliest and latest parts of the day. Rosie got her fingers between the gaps of her cot and tugged a few of his curls through, wrestling with them, cooing thoughtfully. The mobile above them spun lazily — tiny plastic planets built hollow so the air could stir them; a small universe in watch of Sherlock and the baby.

Sherlock closed his eyes, listening to tiny socks slip and shuffle against cotten as she undid his work and kicked the blankets back how she liked them.

“One”, he said, then, “count Watson, it helps.”

“Wa,” she offered.

Sherlock nodded. “Commendable effort, two.”

“Do.”

“Three.”

“Tee”.

“Four”

“Tor.”

“Un”

“Uh”

“Deux”

“Do”

“Trois”

“Ta”

She tugged a bit too hard at one coil of his hair and he frowned, reaching up and enclosing her tiny fingers in his to settle her. Fine with this, she rested on her side and let her hand dangle limply in his. Fine with that, Sherlock let his head fall back further, just shy of her forehead where it rested against the gap closest to his cheek. Their eyes closed.

-

When Sherlock woke, the radiators had been turned on and the sun was up fully. He was curled in a ball on the floor on Rosie’s sunshine rug, and Rosie was snoring softly with her hand dangling out between the slats of her cot.

There was crick in his shoulder, and a pulse in his back from too much pressing on his scar tissue.

John was sat crossed-legged by his head with a cup of tea, watching the window and stroking a finger up and down the length of Sherlock’s neck, and everything in the world was wonderful.

-

They didn’t always find time in the day. But it was the weekend, and everyone’s sleep patterns were muddled. 221B was safe and brimming with affection and baking to the perfect lie-in temperature in a London heatwave. Sherlock’s skin was hot, flushed, as John pressed him down onto their mattress and ducked his head to bite at his nipples, his belly button, his hipbones. Sherlock’s hair curled damply behind his ears and the nape of his neck went damp and his breath came heavy and damp as he gasped and kneaded John’s shoulders affectionately. His pyjamas bottoms sent the lamp teetering on their way off his body and landed in a heap by their now locked bedroom door, the doctor’s aim a bit too vigorous.

“Mind out, John”, he snickered.

“YOU mind out” John replied, and blew a raspberry into Sherlock’s thigh that made one pale leg fling perpendicular and nearly concuss John, which then sent them both into a strangled fit of hysterics. This went on in pretty much the same way, chatter and giggling — until John leaned forward to kiss him again. They went quiet then, the only sounds the birds crossing to and fro between the roosts along Baker Street outside their room, and the shuddering inhalations between kisses. John tucked Sherlock’s legs high around his midsection and put his tongue between Sherlock’s teeth and surged forward both ways until he was inside Sherlock, everywhere, hips snapping luxuriously back and forth in the hot, aching space between Sherlock’s legs.

Sherlock petted John all over his body, no space between them, hands soothing down John’s sides and holding his jaw still so Sherlock could plant kisses on his cheeks and dot, with his mouth, imaginary shapes on one strong shoulder. He lingered at the skin of an afghan bullet wound that was flexing with John’s tender movements. Then his hands went lower and were kneading at the base of John’s spine in a non-verbal plea to fuck harder, harder.

They were trying to be muted but after a while Sherlock’s voice was spiralling higher, desperate little ‘uh’ noises in John’s ear, and John groaned the words ‘God, sweetheart’ deeply into the notch of Sherlock’s throat, dizzy on the taste of the audible gasps slipping out of his friend’s swollen mouth.

For a few hazy minutes they missed the headboard tapping a rhythm against the wall, the pillow slipping into the space between the drawers and the mattress. There was just the burn, sweet and deep, that started in the cradle of Sherlock’s upper thighs and somehow travelled, synapse to synapse, up the length of John’s torso to his lungs, setting them alight. John breathed in the sobbing exhales from Sherlock’s mouth as it moved against his — the fusion of both their bodies, electric. The room brightened and their hands were interlinked over Sherlock’s head, squeezing, tighter. They rocked with their motions and watched the sweat trickle down each other’s pectorals, and John smiled and nibbled at Sherlock’s earlobe, and Sherlock leant up and licked John’s top lip, blue eyes half-lidded and glassy, and said in one breath, “In me, In me, Come, I love you”— and John did as he was asked, gladly.

-

“You’ve been sitting up with her a lot, lately” John said later that morning, spooning a mouthful of porridge into Rosie’s waiting mouth.

The baby chirruped and knocked her legs against her highchair, concurring with her Father’s observation.

Sherlock frowned down at his paper and circled another line in an article about a Banksy pop-up on the Southbank with the tip of his finger. “She used Bostik this time, commentary about the state of the Thames, I suppose.” 

“Sherlock? You listening, love?”

“Always John.” Sherlock said and leant over the toast rack to dash a bit of oat from Rosie’s pink cheek with his thumb. “We have transcended regular habits to become nocturnal beasts, Watson; Daddy would gladly join us if he wasn’t such a grump about his R.E.M.”

John barked a helpless laugh and threw a sticky crust of wholewheat toast at Sherlock’s forehead. “Watch out, or you’ll have the sofa tonight.”

Whippet fast, the other man’s head flew back, exposing John to a jolly nice view of his pale collarbones and the friendly bite mark John had delivered in purple that morning. Sherlock caught the toast in his mouth and chewed, then swallowed smugly. He then fluttered his hands in an exaggerated gesture of gratitude when Rosie screamed and clapped from her front row seat.

“‘Living with a pair of clowns.” John said with no real heat, and stood to take their bowls to the sink.

The sensation of warm, suddy water between his fingers was soothing and he drifted along the feeling for a while, watching nothing in particular but the movement of sunlight between the brickwork of the wall outside the kitchen window. Spoons and the handles of mugs bumped softly against his submerged wrists and hands, and he played a game at the back of his head - that cups Sherlock’s, that bowls Rosie’s, that one’s mine - until the three of them seemed to drift in the lapping tapwater John drew easily back and forth.

He heard them both twittering away to each other behind him, and the plod of Sherlock darting from his chair to Rosie’s to lift her - and yes, there, her little throaty squeal and a rumbling of Sherlock’s chuckle as she inevitably nestled to his chest, strapped in for a ride to her bedroom to get dressed.

He missed them even with nothing but his back to them.

Rosie’s door was only a metre away so he could still hum along absently to the song she always sang to herself when Sherlock, with ever tender efficiency, busied himself buckling her shoes and scrunching up her curls into a top-bun at the top of her tiny head. Neither of the men knew where Rosie had plucked the song from, it seemed to be a recipe of notes she had picked up from John’s vinyls and Sherlock’s violin solos, it had absolutely no concise rhythm and a pace that teetered out and sped up at her leisure.

John concentrated for a while on taking the tea towel to the smallest of the cutlery and leaving the bigger plates to dry upside on the side, and it wasn't until he was reaching to put the cups back on the middle shelf — when his ear caught Sherlock’s leonine tone delicately chiming in with Rosie’s — that he realised he himself was also humming along with her under his breath. The unexpected sweetness of it all nearly dissolved him right there on a Sunday morning, and he had to lean his forehead against the bottom shelf, grit his teeth and breathe through it until he was sure he wasn’t going to shriek with delight.

When he turned back around, Rosie was tottering full pelt towards the usual suspects. The blanket and the blocks could keep her occupied for hours while he and Sherlock read, wrote, reported, blogged and experimented on southern sea-weed particles at their leisure (the last one tended to fall more in Sherlock’s camp presently, as he was working via Skype on a string of coastal murders where the victim’s were all found, perfectly posed, as mermaids in beds of water reeds and shells.)

“Don’t nibble, Watson.” Sherlock scolded, sweeping past John and flicking on the kettle with his elbow as he reached for his goggles and a pair of tweezers. “I shall come over there and force feed you spinach if you’re in a snacking mood.”

Rosie watched Sherlock with wide, unblinking eyes - then promptly threw the block (rather ambitiously) toward the tower of his knees, drool and all. Sherlock yelped and Rosie promptly sat down hard on her nappy fortified behind with a chuckle.

Sherlock turned to John and raised his eyebrows as he rolled the sticky, half-bitten block disdainfully underfoot. “Unsure who won that debate,” he said.

Suddenly involved, John shook himself out of his revery and crossed the kitchen to plant a kiss the faux haughty line of Sherlock’s jaw.

“She’s got you on the ropes, as per,” he said, his parter scrunching his face like he wasn't pleased a punched at the gesture.

“You’re too alike, hate being outnumbered,” Sherlock said, seating himself at the table, now cleared of breakfast, and pulling his microscope toward him. The rest of the experiment was downstairs in the lab he and Mrs Hudson has agreed upon in 221C, but the detective still liked to do his inspecting and at least some of his snooping upstairs with John and Rosie in the background.

“You love it.” John said. He glanced over into the living room, Rosie was busy organising her knick-knacks in colour formation between her feet. Child suitably oblivious, he took the time to drape himself over the inviting curve of Sherlock’s back - one arm wrapping around to put his palm over Sherlock’s chest, clasping the beats of his heart over his shirt, and one slipping down the back of his trousers to rest, unobtrusively, on his arse.

Sherlock cleared his throat with a high pitched noise and fluttered his fingers in John’s face obnoxiously.

“Ah- _hem,_ murderous seaweed, goggles on, detail time.”

John put his chin on Sherlock’s shoulder and exhaled against Sherlock’s neck, which swiftly near-scorched his mouth with the rate it heated up.

From the living room, without looking up, Rosie blew a raspberry in agreement and babbled at the carpet.

“Gerr’off John.”

“Or what?”, he squeezed a handful of plump skin possessively - the grin audile on both their voices.

“Or,” Sherlock didn't finish but ducked his head down to nip at John’s finger where it brushed his clavicle. his goggles bumped John’s forearm.

“Fine, point well made” John said, and pressed his lips to Sherlock’s jaw one last time before slinking off to the sofa for most likely a game of rugby on telly and a doze with his daughter.

Sherlock lifted one hand and waved it back and forth manically in ‘goodbye’ to amuse him.

“Science thanks you for your sacrifice, doctor” he called, and John laughed loudly.

John loved that they took to flirting like they did to everything else together, overtly and rambunctiously. He loved that Sherlock was responsible for the pink and green bobble in the baby girl’s hair and the well-loved, well-fed apple shine of her cheeks as she frowned at her B block thoughtfully. He loved that there’s a case unfolding from their kitchen and that there is beer in the fridge but he doesn't want one to watch the game with, not today, because a bottle is an option not a necessity.

As he drifted to his side of the sofa and eyed the bob of Rosie to and fro in front of the television the familiar thought came to him: he loves them, he loves them, he loves them both, and he loves that he knows their love for him too, as well as the back of his hand.

—

One of the most useful things that had developed from John’s ongoing monthly conversations with his latest therapist was his alignment with his desire to revel in his times of happiness, instead of clinging to them with a fist and a vicious fear that they would be ripped away. He was learning, with time, and plenty of practice from his new relationship with Sherlock and the little girl they were raising, to look with eyes wide open into the passing moments in which things were, if never quite permanent, at least expansively perfect.

He felt that he and Sherlock were different ever since they had emerged from that Well in Musgrave. Now they lived in the blessings of their seconds, minutes and hours, that miraculously continued after so much murder and agony. John felt it keenly every passing day. Rather than strangle his every waking moment into dissatisfaction by waiting for the next rush of adrenaline, he had taken to simply being: wholly involved, without expectation, without doubt, without fear, and always with hope.

A month earlier, only a quarter year since they had fallen into bed -Sherlock had shared a similar sentiment with him. The detective e was always slightly more maudlin during the many of their midnight conversations. John still remembered, as he remembered every moment they’ve ever shared. Leaning easily against one another on the fire escape of 221 Baker Street - their glasses of scotch cooling on the steps by their heads. Sherlock’s arms white and goose pimpled in the breeze that whistled through the grates in the iron railings.

Up there, above the pavement where revellers staggered in and out of cabs, he had asked if John had ever expected to feel anything like the lung-collapsing, hair-raising delight of the birth of Rosie. The baby in question lay curled in Sherlock’s armchair where she had drifted off after dinner.

John had smiled and kissed the knuckles of Sherlock’s hand, pleased but not surprised that the detective equated the arrival of their little housemate with such marvellous emotion.

“I’d felt it before. Just once,” John had said, watching Sherlock watch him with a patient, open gaze. “When you came back” John had told him, specifically - “you were stood by the door, just before you put on the hat. And I was stepping onto the landing. Thought you wouldn’t notice me there, not with all the press pissing about outside. But you turned around, and you just, _looked_ at me.”

There John’s voice had cracked, and Sherlock had known there was nothing to say but to lean his forehead against John’s, till their breaths formulated one air cycle in the space between.

John had cleared his throat, recovered, carried on, “yeah, when you looked at me again, back in the hallway, waiting for me, like always. I felt - I felt that way. So in love, that way.”

He had asked Sherlock the same: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, as it were.

The way they were learning to share, to give and take, to stand like mirrors to each other’s honesty and clarity as their coupling brought them to a new realm of collaboration than ever before.

Sherlock had rolled his forehead onto John’s shoulder, tucking flickering eyelashes and a soft, kissing mouth into the crook of it, breath less than stable. John had stroked down his spine, watched the streetlights gild their window frame in gold, the baby waiting for them just beyond that glow, then the sky, the stars his lover had pretended to forget, the shadows slinking from foxes between the wheelie bins and across the alleyways and behind the footfalls of night-joggers passing through their city.

All this to see and partake in while he waited for Sherlock to find the answer to his own question, the arbiter of the asking.

It was a quiet, halting thing, was Sherlock eventual reply:

“The water. The water was very high when I found you, but it wasn’t as high as I had feared. Your head was still above surface, and you were staring up at the entrance to the Well. You reached up for my hand even before I’d started down the rope. I remember being fixated by the water on your sleeves, dripping off onto my hand”

Another bit of quiet. John closed his eyes and drank in the cold night air and waited, in no rush.

Finally Sherlock loosened his grip on John’s waist and said “so, yes, then. I would say that’s when I knew; that feeling of meeting you, of meeting Rosamund, were not just singular blips in my existence. That to know you was to feel it — like I would die if I didn’t get to keep knowing you.”

Then, when he felt John’s shoulders shaking, he wondered aloud, an ancient joke, “Not good?”. They had laughed. Tipsy, barefoot, and relieved. The love that had no name for so long at last christened and carried proudly in a ceremony of the changing evening light. They laughed a lot. 

“Not good, no - perfect” John said, and leaned over to kiss his flatmate, there, suspended between the windows of the street where everyone could see.

-

And so it was. Aperiod, in the immediate fallout after Sherrinford, that could be considered an Isle of calm. On either side of these weeks there lay swathes of deep waters; dark and cold, sensations of storm, sensations of sinking, sensations of drowning. On one end - the event, relentless and explosive - an eruption site: a day and night of torture in the asylum - a re-discovery of a sister - a re-discovery of Victor Trevor: on the other end - the shockwave finally landing - the emotional consequence of the events.

Emotional context, period of shock, absorption, unconscious subjugation — then, the full blow.

Emotional response to subterranean pain. A flow of feeling, for so long held barely at bay by the flimsiest of things: pride. It was rising, in Sherlock’s dreams. It was the dam broken. The pause of suspension where all crept forward — the last thing before the flood.

\--- 

On Monday, John’s receptionist, Tyler, received a call five minutes before his shift started.

“- and I’m so sorry, it came on pretty suddenly,”

“That’s fine Doctor Watson, I had Millicent on the line the second I got your email - she can cover your patients today.”

Leant against the wall opposite the bathroom in Baker Street, John wilted in relief and had to clench his mobile between his chin and shoulder. His spare hand swiped roughly at the crease in his forehead. He blew out a steadying breath between his teeth and pulled himself together. “Thanks, so much, Tyler, honestly, tell her I can trade her for an afternoon next week will you?”

“She beat you to it. ‘No need’, she said. John, you remember half the staff here owe you one shift or another over the years?”

John smiled thinly in a fleeting riddle of dark humour - at least those hours spent escaping his miserable marriage with Mary and the sharp blade of grief over Sherlock’s initial loss outside Barts were coming in handy now.

“Yeah ‘course. Of course. Still, thank you both, you’re stars.”

“Hard to ignore when you other half’s coming over poorly if you’re a doctor, we all feel your pain, love - tell him to get well!”

At that minute there came another woeful retch from the bathroom and John flinched out a quick “Yes! Christ, its odd. Well I’m off, he’s no better - see you next week”

“Bye!”

John hung up, charging into the kitchen first to fill a clean glass with water and a teaspoon of sugar and grab a cloth before gingerly side stepping the half-open door back into the pitch black of the bathroom.

Sherlock was a shell-shape with his knees tucked up under him, head over the toilet bowl and the shadowy mass of his back racked with shaking movements as he went through another cycle of vomiting.

“Jeee-sus love, what else could you possibly bring up?” John tutted softly, crouching back by Sherlock’s side and pushing a steady hand through the sweaty matt of his partner’s curls to keep them from getting caught with any of the backlash.

Forehead not hot, John clocked, silently - and pushed the sugary water to the side as Sherlock coughed and wheezed.

As he had suspected, this wasn’t as easy as a bug or a bout of flu.

That morning, John had to prise Sherlock out from a night terror worse than either of them had had in months. Half-asleep, they’d battled wearily though the still familiar motions: Sherlock twisting and turning with half-choked screams, his cold sweats soaking the pillowcase and making his skin slippery, sending John’s hands scrabbling for purchase on his chest and his temples where he tried to provide comfort through touch. Then: the lamp on, Sherlock’s chest heaving, his face hidden as he sat at the foot of the bed, legs akimbo, one hand fluttering frantically at his throat: John frowning in sympathy, on his haunches, arm outstretched in place, crouched by Sherlock’s knees where where he’d followed his partner out of bed.

Next: John gingerly exiting stage left to go to calm Rosie’s startled wails and rush her down to Mrs Hudson for some R&R. Martha Hudson the saint 1 - whose continued adoration of her tenants meant that John could both shield their daughter from her godfather’s unholy wailing and shield Sherlock from the added guilt of frightening her, that John knew he would uselessly pin on himself — as if he could delete countless hours of Siberian torture techniques and a bullet in her sternum, the prat.

After a bit of privacy Sherlock had come shuffling out from their bedroom, looking green around the gills and thunderstruck. John had rushed back up the stairs to pull him into his arms, felt for a second like a boy clinging to the shape and intangible ligature of a fallen bird; he rocked his partner like something about to fly away if he loosened his grip, pressing his mouth softly to the tear tracks cloying at Sherlock’s cheeks. Without shirts on, they could feel each others heartbeats crackling nervously, till the echo of two elevated pulses was a large bass that seemed to shake the walls of their little home-made study.

John had slid his grip to the back of Sherlock’s neck and pulled him in slightly, addressing scrunchd eyes and a bowed, sweat beaded forehead when he said “I’m going to let Tyler know.”

The vomiting had started while John had been on the phone. A thump of shinbone against the tiles and a god-awful sob that must have slipped out as it went on. Sherlock’s body trying to burn memories in acid and force them out face-first.

Presently, John shook his head to dispel the worrying details of the morning and leant forward to dab the line of Sherlock’s spine with the cloth. “Want your water now?” he said.

Sherlock sighed, spat, and nodded with his fingers pressed against his mouth. He reached for the glass and John met him halfway, their fingers brushing for a second longer than necessary. John lent his head back against the base of the sink and eyed a spider twitching in the corner above their shower curtain. Sherlock drank loudly.

“A bad one, this.” John murmured. The spiders leg waved with the breeze that blew soothingly in the grate from the street. Cars were starting to rumble by. All the busy people.

“Yes. It wasn’t Serbia though.” Sherlock said. They were was the first words he’d spoken all morning, and his voice was as rough as he looked.

How honest they could be with the lights off and their hands mashed together on the bathroom floor.

John looked at him for a while. Sherlock. His blue eyes so bright, almost florescent, a crescent of ice that held the night. Dark hair a mess, bowed bottom lip turned softly downward, heavy brows relaxed - sad, but openly so, all griefs written in the lines on the pale, boyish face — a language only John had bothered to learn.

“A new one?” John asked, already knowing the answer.

Sherlock stood, dusting off his knees and reaching over to wash his hands and stuff half a tube of Colgate down his mouth with John's toothbrush. The thin horizon of his sternum aligned with John’s eyeline. It was quickly clouded by a large, nimble hand. John took it and squeezed as Sherlock helped him stand.

“I’ll tell you about it tonight. I don’t want to talk about it now. And I want to see Rosie. You can still make it to the surgery if you take the piccadilly line."

“Fine, Fine, Fine, and ahh - no” John said and huffed a laugh through his nose. He steered Sherlock out of the bathroom and toward the sofa.

Sherlock make an agreeing noise and promptly burrowed under the spare tartan throw, till John was smiling down at two pale feet and two bright eyes from either end of the blanket.

“You sit, or lay - i don’t care. Just close your eyes and rest, I’ll get Rosie dressed and we’ll take Mrs Hudson down to Speedy’s with us for breakfast to make up for giving her a heart attack - not your fault, don’t go shy, she loves you when you shoot holes in the wall and she loves me when I curse up and down in a bad leg day, so you can estimate where that leaves you in her books right now. Then we’re going to pay the bill, leave the ladies be for some peace and quiet and go to Scotland Yard for a case - not a 9, not an eight, but a nice simple seven. - kay?”

“That’s hot, Doctor,” whispered the threadbare patch of blanket where Sherlock’s mouth hid.

John smiled through a sigh and went to fetch another glass of water. Sherlock cracking jokes was known to be a single of sheer nervousness.

“Cool down, you” he said, and placed the water on the coffee table. “Get dressed when you’re ready and not before, we’ll be waiting downstairs.”

A streak of pale skin as an arm shot out of the blanket and brought the glass back under for desperate gulps, the peak of the blanket rose up and then down in what looked like a solemn nod. “thank you” it said.

John bent and kissed where he guessed Sherlock’s forehead to be. “I love you, take your time.”

—-

As John expected Sherlock perked up enough to throw on a dressing gown and take the girls to Speedy’s.

They clattered down the stairs, John lifting Rosie up to swing the knocker on the door as they locked up, Sherlock talking Mrs Hudson through the latest case.

Angie (a once member of the homeless network who had worked on the coffee machine part-time around her studies ever since Sherlock had personally recommend her to the manager) didn't bat an eye at the lot of them. Not at the dishevelled and pyjama clad detective, or the squealing child in John’s arms who was reaching for her notepad.

Her dark eyes met theirs and she nodded briskly to their usual table in the corner. “Same as always?” she asked, offering her spare pen, a spongebob novelty, to stop Rosie’s shrill requests for the notepad.

Sherlock walked past Angie, plucked the pen from her fingers and immediately stuck it in his mouth to test the strength of the plastic. He evaluated almost everything that was heading for the vicinity of Rosie’s teething maw the same way - “If I choke, I will simply spit. Watson can’t promise anything”, was the muttered hypothesis if anyone asked.

Mrs Hudson took the baby gently out of John’s hold and followed suit to their seats. “Careful Sherlock, you’ll ruin your breakfast” she scolded.

John and Angie smiled at each other, John slightly apologetically. “He’s been a bit poorly, not sure if we want to risk french toast.” he said,

Angie beckoned him over to the counter and whipped a jar of aero chunks from beneath the till. “We have a blender now, John! Could mash these up and stick it in a mug with ice and almond milk, mint settles, right?”

Sherlock tilted his chair back from their table and called over several peoples heads - “That sounds disgusting, please do!”

—-

Turns out neither man had time to finish eating. Half distracted by Mrs Hudson’s Bridge club gossip and Rosie’s impromptu interpretive dance performance with her yoghurt, they’d whiled away an hour in each other’s company: Sherlock quiet, still pale, but smiling tenderly at the girls over the table. As John finally lifted his cappuccino to his lips, Sherlock’s pocket buzzed and he pulled out his phone to read a text. Lestrade — perhaps sensing their appetite for case notes — had an update.

“More mermaids! John, coat? Hudders, baby?” Sherlock said, slamming the phone down onto his napkin after no doubt cutting Lestrade off mid-sentence.

“Ooh Lovely! its my Sunday with her anyway” Mrs Hudson chirped as Rosie upturned her bowl thoughtfully. “Mermas” the baby whispered, eyebrows raised at Sherlock in respectful enquiry.

“No dearest, just corpses embalmed with saltwater.” Sherlock told her. Loudly.

“Heh, morning.” John said to the couple who looked up from their fry ups to stare.

—-

They hurriedly put together a bag for Rosie and some “Sensible, _please,_ Sherlock” clothing on their backs while Angie put Sherlock’s milkshake in a reusable cup. A whistle, a taxi, then they were waving at Rosie through the window until she and Mrs Hudson disappeared, chatting, into the flat.

When they were round the corner and the driver was on speaker to his missus, John turned to check on his partner’s mood without the soothing presence of their daughter. He was nearly brained by the straw that hovered by his eye.

“Sherlock!” he snapped.

‘Oopsy, try a bit?” Sherlock replied, not taking his gaze from the part of the window where Rosie had been waving.

“Ta, actually” John said, mollified, and leant over to tuck an arm round the back of Sherlock’s neck as he took a sip. He’d have liked some sort of essential carbohydrate to join it but he wasn't going to push today.

“It’s good! Make sure you drink it all, blood sugar and all that.”

“We should make these for Watson.”

“Yeah we should.”John said, watching Sherlock watch the window. Then he said, “Are you alright?”

“Thinking.”

“Mhm, you want to tell me what it was before we take this case and forget to bring it up again?”

“Or maybe we should wait till her teeth are better. Cold sensitises her gums.”

“Good idea.”

Sherlock turned to look at him. He stuck the straw back in his eternally pouty mouth, took a long slurp. John laughed. The cab eased into a locked bit of traffic and the motor rumbled lowly beneath their feet.

Around the straw, Sherlock said, “My sister.”

John’s thoughts stopped like the traffic. Hit the brakes. Assess, assess: his lover’s fragile, newly practiced heart the pedestrian whose feet he didn't want to run over.

Sherlock’s eyebrow arched, he sensed the shape of John’s strangled emotion inflating in the cramped space of the back seat they shared. “She was psychologically rigorous,” he said, as if trauma was as simple as that.

“That she was. She gets in everyone’s head, you know that,” John replied.

Sherlock blinked.

“I know that she doesn’t scare _you_ ,” he said,

John played with the curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, watched the shapes of people, outside, out of focus. Londoners, just smatterings of colour and noise that flooded the pavement and lapped at the side-streets and shopfronts.

There were shapes behind Sherlock’s eyes too. Things further away. Children by the sea.

John knew the whole story. Sherlock told him the first night they’d slept together. Afterwards they’d got drunk and ordered Chinese and laughed till they cried about all the ways they'd thought they could ever survive with their backs to each other.

The Cab moved an inch. Stopped. The driver swore, ended his call, and turned the radio over to the football.

They waited, close enough now to share a seatbelt. They waited until John could say it without raising his voice.

“She doesn’t scare me because she didn’t _abuse_ me.”

“She killed your therapist and put you down a hole.”

“And now I have a nice new therapist that helps me talk about that. Who do you talk to about what she did to you?”

Sherlock scoffed. “It’s not a competition.”

“And yet somehow you’re always last place.”

Damn it, they’d both raised their voices, slightly. The driver smashed the car horn with his elbow and shouted “Ruddy tourists, sorry fellas.”

“Pay him, do,” Sherlock said and flung his passenger door open and leapt out onto the street. In the time it took their driver to notice and question What The Fuck Do You Think You’re Doing, John unfolded folded the last fiver left over from their breakfast and thought:

_Well I know what happened there._

He threw the cash, hopped out the door and felt his height extremely vividly as his ankles jarred at meeting the road.

Sherlock was waiting mulishly by the traffic lights, eyeing - with open curiosity - the purple faced cabbie cursing him from the lane over.

“Walking to the Yard from here?” John said. He kept his back resolutely to the road until the driver was out of earshot - trying to avoid getting too het up about the aggression the main was aiming in a certain willowy, curly-headed direction. He was about a minute from walking back over to punch the driver right in the eye socket and bellow ‘leave my boyfriend alone while he processes his trauma you massive twat.’

“Needed some fresh air,” Sherlock muttered, ‘Don’t hit him, John”. Although Sherlock himself held an expression like he was considering sticking his tongue out at the receding rear of the Cab (John loved that look). But he didn’t, just shrugged and took John’s hand in his and pulled him along. The edges of his Belstaff coat flung out a bit into a sharp, neat line, slicing through the crowd and parting stragglers with their every step.

—-

“Weird one, eh,” Lestrade said.

Sherlock muttered something from his position spread-eagled out on the office. The various crime scene photographs sprayed out his elbows. His jaw was in that taught thinking line that John had been meaning to mention was sexy.

“Ay?” Lestride said, and ‘Come again?’ John said, in unison.

Sherlock lifted his head and rested his head on his palms like a teenage girl. “I said - they’re always weird, Greg,” he grinned.

“Is that a milkshake?” Sally Donovan said, stopping dead in her tracks in the doorway. She frowned first at her boss, then the small collection of Interns, all of which were stood alongside Lestrade and John, gazing down at the Detective in the middle of the room. Lestrade squinted at her briefly, shrugged.

She sighed, doffed the crate of case notes in her arms and kicked a heel at Sherlock’s crossed ankles as she passed.

“If you spill that on our forensic photos, Holmes…” she muttered darkly.

“Yes, Yes, off with his head.” Sherlock finished, and took another sip of the green sludge between his straw.

“Speaking of,” John said, squatting to peer over his shoulder.

“Yes, Lestrade - you said the decapitations were partial?” Sherlock muttered.

“Reeds here are tight, but not enough to warrant asphyxiation. It’s just keeping a wound together.” John said, and let his finger trace the collarbones of the women in the picture, in a cheshire cat curve. Sherlock’s eyes followed the movement.

“Part Compressor, part Garnish, but not a noose,” Sherlock said.

Lestrade shooed the Interns away and groaned at the pressure in his back as he plonked himself onto his knees on the office floor on Sherlock’s other side.

“They didn’t drown either, fellas.” he said.

“Yes. No signs of Edema in the face,” Sherlock said,

“Or bloating at all,” John finished.

“They didn’t spend long in the water, but they were in it,” Sherlock said.

“Lack of bleeding in the throat area despite massive wound, so they were dead before the cut, but not dead before that, because they swallowed a touch of water too, I guess” John said quietly.

Sally flicked on the kettle in the corner kitchenette and rattled the teaspoon thoughtfully against the undersides of her teeth as she watched them natter.

John picked up another picture. “He has sand in his mouth too, could have choked if he hadn't already had his windpipe crushed.”

Sally cringed despite herself, a day from half her lifetime ago wavering, unbidden, in her mind as the kettle boiled. Her, her yellow swimming costume, the smell of lotion on her auntie’s wrists. A cone sticking out of the sand, her brother’s face, crinkled with the delight of a dare. The bite of the icecream, ruined and grimy. The burning sensation at the roof of her mouth as her teeth closed down on hot sand.

She shook her head. “Anyone want a cuppa?” she said.

John and Lestrade made soft noises of agreement and passed more photos between them, muttering about motive.

She lost herself in the sound of their voices and missed Sherlock standing, darting across the room and drawing level beside her by the sink, until he was smirking at her over his crossed arms as she yelped and drew back.

“Sneaky bastard,” she said, and pushed a mug with a teabag towards him, she wasn't even going to bother with his finicky taste in sugar and milk.

“Why is tea permitted and not my breakfast,” Sherlock said, and reached over her head, selecting her own brand of sweetener without looking ( _How!?_ she thought) and placing it by her wrist.

“Because only lunatics consume things as fluorescent green as that.”

“It’s _minty_ ,” he levied, popping the T.

They stirred their drinks in silence for a while.

Lestrade and John enjoyed a heated debate that was somehow simultaneously about Tottenham defence manoeuvres and whether more strength was necessary to completely submerge a person or simply strangle them on the shoreline. Sally guessed Sherlock had started it with some obscure rhetoric from his murder-vision spider-senses and scuttled over to her when the other two got excited about it.

He did that more and more, she had noticed - avoid the debates that he used to fling himself into with relish. Then there was the tender, aching way he tracked John at scenes with his eyes, like a lanky shadow. And the way John touched him, little reassuring pats when they thought no one was looking.

It was more than honeymoon behaviour. There was something of the healing about it; she found family members clutched their loved ones the same way at the happy ending of missing person cases.

She tapped her spoon sharply against the side of her mug and swallowed when Sherlock flinched and masked it with a cough.

Recovery - that was the word she was looking for - it was like they were both recovering from a blow that knocked them flat. More nervous and sweet-natured than she had thought the moody miscommunicators from the Reichenbach era could be. She wanted to ask — who in the world hurt you like that, after everything you’d already seen and done?

“Look at you, though. Treating your metabolism to actual activity during a case?” she asked, instead.

Sherlock huffed a laugh. They turned and rested their hips against the counter.

Haltingly he said, “There’s a young woman in my home, now. One I would like to continue on her superior trajectory. And a partner I would like to take care of. I realised…that is,”

He paused. Sally didn't turn her head to look at him. This was her job, sometimes, just listening.

Sherlock continued: “Disordered eating, in whatever capacity, is a flawed metric of power. Especially when you’re…”

“Loved?” she said, before she could stop herself.

They glanced at each other.

“I was going to say needed,” he said.

“How about both,” she said.

“Careful Donovan, the interns might think you put up with me.” He nodded towards the glass panels at the end of the room, where two such stragglers were pretending, very poorly, not to be peering through the blinds.

“Nah, I’ll put the fear of god in them, like I did you once.”

“What an ambitiously selective memory,” Sherlock countered.

“You’d still be in a holding cell with my name on it if your brother didn’t shag the prime minister” she said.

Sherlock held his mug away from his mouth with exaggerated offence, “Oh look at that, you’ve soured my milk.”

“Excuse me Holmes, I don’t consult you to gossip with my Sergeants” Lestrade called.

Sally and Sherlock’s mugs dipped and eyebrows rose in unison as they turned to find John and and the DI grinning over at them from the forensic pile.

“Did you hear something?” Sally said.

“Not a peep, no ” Sherlock said.

John replied with a cheerful middle finger, and then leaned to look at an autopsy file Lestrade was brandishing below his nose. The silver top of their heads were twin moons.

The tea cooled and Sherlock and Sally stayed in the kitchenette and drank in comfortable silence.

He was content to close the conversation and finish his drinks but he sensed Donovan’s comment brewing by the hunch of her shoulders.

She hadn’t called him Freak since they were years younger.

He turned his body in her direction and let the corner of his mouth turn up expectantly. Ignored the flutter of anxiety that being bereft of a hard shoulder still occasionally gave him.

Sally saw right through it.

“Just, I was just thinking that they’re Nice. Nice men we have there.” she said, and gestured to John and Lestrade with her chin.

Off-guard, Sherlock looked from her to Lestrade, to John, then down at himself. He assumed she had known — he and John hid little of their new boundless affection — but they had never touched on the subject in conversation. And Sally and Greg…

“I didn't know - “ he started, trailed off, took another sip of tea, changed direction, “something in the water here I expect.’

She laughed again, a quite huff into her mug. “Different kettle of fish, Holmes. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. He’s like my dad, or my brother if he asks. And I mean that, not everyone is in love with their best friend.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, “dull for them,” he said, and broke into a small smile that Sally mirrored.

“Family. Is what I meant,” Sally said.

“Yes.” Sherlock said. And nothing more.

They finished their drinks, still smiling at nothing in particular. The silence was interrupted when Lestrade reached for his phone and swiftly stood up and strode into the corner. They watched carefully, not a breath between them, as he nodded briskly, smacked the mobile down hard against the sides of his jacket and turned clockwise with his hand grasping at the back of his head. Unsurprised at the beam of three pairs of his eyes on him, the Inspector rose his empty hand and shrugged.

“There’s been another,” he said.

—

It was near midnight when they left the Yard. A fine drizzle of rain dabbed at the steps down to the street and the great steel colonnades of the Yard’s entrance. In the distance, clouds churned over the old redbrick chimneys that sat hustled in-between the office blocks. John turned his face into the air and breathed deeply: sensing cigarette and motor smog doused in the crips, clean flavour of a city storm.

Oblivious to everyone’s attempts to get him to stand under-cover, Sherlock hopped from foot to foot out in the damp, furiously googling train ticket prices and texting Molly with his spare thumb.

Lestrade eyed the sky with caution and huddled even further back in the doorway of Scotland Yard. John could just barely see his broad outline in the glow of the hall, from there he spoke. “Listen, mate, I know you guys are still settling in to things. You don’t need to come all way out on the case.”

John had half a heart to agree. They missed Rosie and she them something fierce even when she spent a weekend with her Holmesian grandparents or Mrs Hudson. And he still had concerns about Sherlock, who had been physically ill with anxiety that morning and had not, as only John could really know, recovered completely at any point of the day (too quiet, no energy for bickering, too pale, still too pale.)

“Yeah, we’ll review it in the morning I reckon.” John said.

“No we shan’t,” Sherlock said, popping up in between them suddenly and shaking his wet hair at them like a dog. “In the space of seven hours the killer has murdered two more locals while we were gawking at the, already outdated, crime scene materials. I’ve booked the six AM to Wells and Molly said she’ll take Watson to the Cinema to see Trolls 2.””

“Trolls?” Lestrade spluttered.

“and Mermaids and Murder!” Sherlock sang.

“Oh my,” John sighed.

\-- 

Victor found William under the bed. He nearly mistook the tip of his nose, the matted slope of his curly fringe, for moth balls or dust or something his Mother hoovered up on Sundays.

The eyes gave it away. The blue was shimmering, leaking track-lines that stood out startlingly clear silver tones against William’s white cheeks. 

Victor tucked first his elbows into his tummy and clenched his hands and pushed himself into that same dark, secured corner, propelled by the shove of his booted foot against William’s dresser.

“Lo”, he said.

William wiped the bridge beneath his nose with the edge of Victor’s coat sleeve and shuffled closer. Their knees knocked, bodies bent and heads tucked low like beansprouts in the ground.

“Your Mummy let me in,” Victor said, then “want to play top trumps?”

William shook his head.

“Want to play on the boats?”

‘The boats’ were a couple of upturned bottle crates they usually dragged out into the shallows of the bay at the end of the lane, sticks in hand, ready to wallop the other till they were the last one standing. It wasn't least common for them to drag each other down into the surf and both go home sodden.

“Can’t, salt would sting,” William muttered.

Victor frowned, then nodded sympathetically, “In your mouth?” he said.

The day before they had pulled William’s first baby tooth out with a piece of string and the latch of a garden gate. Mrs Trevor had found them screeching with laughter in the vegetable patch and bribed William with a glass of nesquik to sit still so she could staunch the blood with a tea towel.

But, no, not the lost tooth. William was shaking his head again. Without speaking, he extended his forearm through the dark. Victor squinted. He could see the pale underside of his friend’s arm, the slight jut of the joints of his wrists, but little else.

He scraped his cheek a little against the harsh floorboard, craning to see. William’s heavy exhales in the minuscule space between them made the hidey-hole feel airless and sweltering. Victor’s mouth was dry.

“Can’t see anything under here,” he said, plaintively - already reaching instead to grab the arm.

William flinched but let him, and for a minute all Victor held was a skinny arm and his own breath. Then William twisted his arm slowly in place and Victor’s hand clung on and then his pinky finger touched something terrible.

There was a little hiccup of noise, William hissing, but not drawing his arm back, even as Victor let go.

They’d had carpet burns before. Both of them: leaping from a sofa to an armchair and missing the landing.

The burn that covered the back of William’s elbow was bigger than that.

Victor’s fingers had gone tacky just from skimming the start of it, and when he wiped his hand hurriedly on the side of his shorts he smelt pennies. He coughed, then sucked the air through his teeth and clucked with that sympathy noise his Mother always made.

He could see the edge of William’s frown in the little light.

“Sore,” William whispered.

Victor was really terribly unsure why it is him lying under the bed wiping William’s blood off of his fingertips while the rest of the Holmes brewed dark coffee downstairs and drifted in and out of airy rooms.

The oldest boy had not even looked up from his book at the kitchen table as Victor had toed off his plimsolls and darted up the staircase, calling William's name.

“Got any plasters in the house?” Victor asked.

William shook his head so hard he nearly knocked it against the wooden slat above them.

“I’m not going down there. I’ve had enough of it today” he sniffed, sounding weary in that way he sometimes did.

Enough of what? It didn’t matter. Victor felt bigger and braver with William, folded up like a mouse in the corner of a bedroom, then he did when half the people downstairs looked at him, and he knew his friend felt the same.

Victor didn’t ask who did it. It was clearly not an accident, and if there was a boy who cried when he slipped or had an accident it was certainly not Will. That only left the usual suspect. But Victor didn't ask, because he was just a little boy, and there was no words he knew yet to talk about that sort of thing.

Those days, he barely even recognised the source of his own intense, creeping of dread every time he visited the Holmes house; a sharp pulse of a nervousness that always started at the sight of the two tiny, pink, Cinderella slippers by the front door.

So he didn’t ask. He said, smiling widely through the dark, “Looks like I’ll have to chop the arm, Blue-beard”

William laughed, just a little, but enough - the sound tight and congested. 

“Fetch the ship surgeon,” he replied, voice thick. 

But there was no one to fetch, they knew that. Not downstairs, not out there.

It was just them. 

The boys stayed under the bed for the rest of the day. 


	2. Chapter 2

Despite his reservations the night before, Lestrade didn’t seem surprised to see Sherlock charge into the forensics tent. 

The crime scene was tented up and gathering dust, fighting to stay standing while in the cross-winds of the beach-end. As John followed followed closely behind the Detective he had to wrestle with the door-flap as it whipped and cracked in the wind. 

Lestrade felt a laugh coming and breathed it into his fist, trying to wear a politely concerned face as the material of the tent puffed with a particularly wicked energy and hit John square in the face. 

Sherlock, as well as the the other technicians, were oblivious - moving about the small, cordoned space they shared across the dunes. 

John looked up and met his gaze. Lestrade grinned, and John silently mouthed ‘Twat’ in his direction over Sherlock’s bowed head. 

“Out?” Sherlock said to the closest person he could see with whom he had shared at least one conversation before. 

Lestrade and John both winced at the question mark tacked on in clear afterthought. 

The lucky listener was Samantha - Sam - Graves. If she was startled by the deep voice of their regular consultant ex-machina, the white hood and glasses she wore shielded her expression. Sam stood from her squatted position by a tent peg and drew level with Sherlock. She waved him by with a flutter of nitrile clad fingers and ducked out of the tent. The others followed suit. 

“Thanks,” John called after them, and Sherlock nodded. He snapped the latex glove at his wrist and dipped down onto his haunches by the head of the victim. His head turned this way and that, hair twisting in the sea breeze. The other two men watched as Sherlock hunched his shoulders ad squinted down at the grey face of Kylie Monroe. 

Kylie Monroe. Killed, left, and found. 

She was changed in death. But there was one last thing that bound her to the activity of life - Sherlock Holmes - a man looking at her remains with as much visceral intention as he did with the living. 

It was her nudity that bothered John, as a caretaker and a man. He stepped forward and noted to the company, with a tidy posture and reverent tone; the lacerations on the undersides of her breasts, slit to and fro in a vicious web down her ribcage, the binding that drew her legs together from the bare mid-thigh’s downwards, the filaments of pearly pink seashells, dotted with blood and gristle, that lined her navel, looping over and down her hipbones. Gills. A tail. 

It was the seaweed in her hair that bothered Lestrade. Once, his daughter had permitted him to brush out her plaits while she rushed through her breakfast, before she had gone to live with her mother. It was her hair he thought of, the way she had winced at the slightest knot when he’d forget his strength and corkscrew the brush to the ends.   
Because Kylie Monroe’s hair had been formulaically tangled with clumps of seaweed, brine and gunk — a mane that stood out dense and oily against the sand.   
The weeds lifted in the wind and emerged from her parting or the curve of her ear to brush her mouth, or nostrils. 

It would have taken time - time and pain - to tie in such a swamp into a girl’s hair. 

It was her expression that bothered Sherlock. Too peaceful. Too placid. Her mouth a straight cliff edge. If she had drowned, maybe he could accept that kind of look. Dying in water was said to be peaceful; to sink through the coming cold and dark. Drowning was a surrender, in the end. 

Eurus had taught him that. 

Serbian men had taught him that when they held his head under a rusting tap until he fainted.

But Kylie Monroe had not drowned. She had not sunk. She had not drifted. She had been in the sea, yes, but she had not died in the water. She had died on the bit of land where she lay, her face to the sun and her eyes on her murderer. 

_(‘I like to watch it happen’)_

Sherlock bit down on the edge of his tongue. 

_(‘Maintain eye contact, Sherlock’)_

He shook his head. 

The tent pole rattled, somewhere overhead a gull squealed, and all that faded but for the sound of the waves on the shoreline metres away —

one, two, recede, breathe in,   
three, rush in, breathe out. 

The tide pounded against his skull. 

Sherlock thought: Why didn't she fight? No struggle. The throat slit only when the blood had already frozen in time. Not even a bruise or a scratch on her nailbeds. A young girl, he could see; comic-book collector, likes chocolate, dating someone local, shops frequently online, jogs every other morning, vegan, recovered self-harmer, a smile on her lips as someone tore that future away. Why? 

Sherlock stood, brushed sand from his knees and sighed around the phantom taste of water, slipping putrid down his throat. John’s eyes were waiting for his. Lestrade crossed his arms and nodded. 

“Go on then, tell us who she was,” John said. 

Sherlock did. 

When he with the very first deduction. The one he had seen on her immediately, a peacefulness at the heart of the crime, because Kylie would never settle at the hands of her killer — 

“Unless she knew them. Unless she felt safe. We’re looking for the people Miss Monroe frequented the shoreline with. I took the liberty of checking her phone and - ”

“Hang on, when did you -” Lestrade spluttered. 

“- took it from the tech bag.”

Lestrade whipped a small baggy out of his pocket, grumbling, and motioned for Sherlock to continue as he did so. 

Sherlock swung the phone out to the both of them, left to right so they could see what remained of the screen from their positions flanking him either side of Kylie’s body. 

It had obviously suffered water damage, riddled with salt stains and a crack down the middle. On one side the screen was lit up a furiously bight electric green and white, with a row of pink and grey cubes bridging top to home screen button.

But in the corner, when Sherlock made ‘go on’ hum and made them peer, one small slither of the original lock-screen had miraculously survived the submergence. It showed what was clearly half of Kyle’s living smile, her green eye squinting. Behind her they could make out a cloud, a section of blue, and the surf huts furthest off in the corner of the each. 

“She didn’t take this herself, we can see both of her shoulders, relaxed. But her eyeline and the comfortable pose suggests she could see herself. A selfie then. Someone was stood in front of her, holding the phone. The bit of blue isn’t the sea, it would never have been that far in at that time of day. It’s an earring, a blue one, hanging off the ear of someone. Statistically, a girl, about Kylie’s age. And they would have been the other half of the picture.” 

“So?” Lestrade prompted.

Sherlock handed him back the phone and continued, “We’re looking for the selfie girl, and anyone else associated with her. We’re looking for someone who could get close enough to pose with Kylie, to swim with her, take her ashore, and kill her without alerting her at all to danger.”

Sherlock finished. He looked to John in the half second after his speech before he could stop himself, didn't really want to stop himself. John head dipped and his left eye flickered in a wink - a toast to the game. Sherlock’s cheeks flushed. He looked away. 

Lestrade, patted Sherlock on the back. 

“Great. Great stuff. Off to the town then, is it?” 

  
—— 

There was light talk of starting at the Post Office, to see if the girl in the picture with Kylie had local business or was known. 

In the end, all Sherlock needed was the earring in the photo. 

‘Handmaid’ he clarified, tilting the phone for John to see and tapping the slightly pixelated block of blue hovering by Kylie’s face. 

“Blue glass for the hoop, and expensive string, custom blue, around the top there. Very unique earrings. We drove the long way in through town, and the only jewellery shop is a boutique that sells silver and gold. So more likely she’s making them herself, with glass and shells from the beachfront” Sherlock muttered. 

John nodded. He said “bling expert now, are we?” for the sake of replying, really just enjoying lowering his voice and having to lean in closer to Sherlock’s side as they both squinted down at the mobile.

The fact was, John knew Sherlock knew about jewellery. He was a veritable teacher of all trades in Rosie’s unstoppable quest for Trying Stuff. 

It was no secret that while John volunteered at the nearest Pathway centre (and unobtrusively checked in on some of the Homeless Network) Sherlock was occasionally wont to spent Friday afternoons with Rosie in Mrs Hudson’s living room, where the little girl emerged up the stairs, beaming, coated in the syrup of one of Mrs Hudson’s tray-bakes and clutching some sort of drooled upon bracelet or ring.

They were treasures a little too polished for her clumsy fingers and John had long suspected Sherlock had a studious influence over the construction stage. John sometimes wore his favourite of the creations, a red pull-string bracelet with a J bead dangling in the middle, under his plaid shirt to surgery shifts. 

John jerked back into awareness at the colossal blare of a horn. He turned around. 

Sherlock had drifted off to leave him musing and was leant with two palms flat on the bonnet of Lestrade’s squad car. He was having some sort of stand-off with Donovan who sat lax in the front seat with a string of liquorice hanging out of her mouth and her foot on the wheel, triggering the horn off into Sherlock’s face once, twice, three times with slow pushes from her toe. 

The wind zig zagged between the rotting wood of erosion Groynes and jutted out awards the sea, whipping up particles of dry, hot sand and snatching away half of Sherlock’s performative shout. John caught something about a ‘Craft Shop’ in Sherlock's treble yell and instantly thought of it sat a way down a hill, between a patisserie and a pottery making studio. 

A craft shop! It had made John smile driving by, to see the pink and green pastel, like slipping into a storybook -- that is if you forgot that the gingerbread town at the precipice of the sea in fact had a murder problem rotting in its sugarcane centre,

“Put them out of their misery. You take his nibs to the craft shop and Donovan and I will check out the school and Kylie’s work, tick the boxes. Let’s finish this double time.” Lestrade said, walking over. 

Donovan stuck her head out of the driver’s window and started shouting back at Sherlock. John smirked in approval and Lestrade wiped the bottom of his face wearily with his hand. 

A few techs still drifting about in the car park realised Sherlock was hitherto distracted from stomping about their playground and grabbed their kits to start toward the faint outline of the forensics tent, which was wobbling like a dropped dollop of ice cream on the heat-hazy line on the horizon. 

Lestrade patted John on the shoulder and gave him a thumbs up as the doctor started towards the car. 

“And John?” Lestrade called, making him look back. The Inspector seemed, for a second, bone-weary, face pinched as he looked at John through the direction of the sun. Then his mouth lifted into the usual rugged smile as he said “dial if you run into trouble, Kay?” 

And perhaps, they were all a team by now, like they never had been before. Not just the junkie and the wounded soldier, but the consultants of a network of men and women, shoulder to shoulder against the coming fogs of violence - all eyes open. The kind of team that checked up on them not just as protocol but from a well of personal care. 

John smiled long and hard back and lifted a hand in return. “Course!”

He grabbed Sherlock by the coat collar on his way past the car and waved back at Donovan as Sherlock yelped and jerked along behind him. Recovering, the detective pirouetted round and made pointed use of his long legs to get ahead of John, hand falling to squeeze his partner’s briefly before waggling dramatically overhead - “don’t bother us before we’re done, good luck all,” he yelled over his shoulder.

In answer, Sally wound down the window of the squad-car and swore loud enough to startle the seagulls that had tentatively settled back Sherlock was stood a second before. 

—- 

Mia Magoli had taken over Hobbycrafts after her older brother Jacob moved out of town to marry a wealthy business manager. 

The store had been no particular passion for him, but within the first week Mia had fallen in love with the three aisles, the triplet row of shelves - six-up, two across — the gaudy lamps that casted the ceiling in plum and marigold, the rolls of silver wrapping paper beneath the till that jostled her knees when she tucked in her stool, and the thick smell of ceramic in an old room. 

At the start she had sent Jacob a few texts about the inventory, a couple of silly selfie timers with the hammers and saws. Those first days, when things were quiet, she had even called him while she was on shift. But his replies were often late and monosyllabic - and with business picking up thanks to Kylie and her girlfriend, Mia found she barely had the energy to see to Jacob’s loafing update on the new sangria jug and the kittens in the garden out in Furteventura. 

Which is why she silenced Jacob’s latest call and pocketed her phone without any guilt as the door-bell jangled. Two men came into the store. 

“Hi there,” she said. 

The taller of the two stepped up to the counter. He wore a straw sunhat that sad oddly formal on his high, regal forehead. He tipped it her way. There was a hint of catching sun on his very defined cheekbones, maybe even a bit of red on the sharp corner of his jaw as he chewed a piece of gum and pressed his sunglasses up to his hairline with a long finger. He paused his work on the sweet and shot her a winning lopsided smile, and Mia liked him instantly. 

“Hiya,” he said, “I’m Gavin, this is my boyfriend, Hamish.” 

At this, the shorter of the two, a handsome looking older guy, coughed loudly into his fist. Recovering, he stepped up to Gavin and bumped him, play like, with his shoulder. The he turned to Mia.

A tanned, tough-skinned hand took the one she offered over the counter. As they shook hands Hamish let out a sudden, helpless giggle, then stopped himself. She thought he seemed rakish, but then he ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck before looking back and asking her how her day was going - and she liked him too. 

“Super,” she half-lied, ignoring the weight of her phone in her jeans pocket. She asked what she could do for them. 

“Oh we’ve lit-er-all-y just arrived,” Gavin said, leaning in between her and Hamish, the letters of ‘literally’ sung. Hamish’s eyebrows lifted, sending her an exasperated look over his partner’s pointy shoulder in what Mia assumed was a conspiracy for her to partake. She swallowed a smirk. Funny guys. 

Gavin, oblivious (or undeterred?) by their silent laughter, plowed ahead. He put one finger on the glass of the counter and tapped, drawing all eyes to the contents of the transparent cabinet built into it: rows upon rows of glinting watch faces and bracelet charms for people to collect - her brothers only apparent pride before he left. “So,” her tall new customer said, chipper, “we’re staying at the Caxton resort, we’re surprising our niece, and she loves her crafts, like lo-oves it.”

“She does love it,” said Hamish solemnly. 

Gavin stood abruptly and put his back to her. She tried very hard not to eye the strong slimline up to his nape and the rogue black curls poking out of the straw-hat.

“Hun, you were going to look at the strings.” Gavin said. 

“Was I?” Hamish said, smiling pleasantly. 

“Ye-es you were,”

The curls nodded vigorously. 

“You were checking out the strings and I was gonna handle the rest” as if remembering Mia, Simon whipped back round and tapped the glass again, “Kylie loves blue, do you have any blue stuff?” then he turned back round and called to Hamish as he headed down the aisle - “Get her BLUE please.”

‘Um.” Mia blinked. 

Hamish darted down the aisle and before long there came the sound that every craft-shop owner translated as ‘ominous’: that of can handles being flipped and tins being shuffled by the by. 

“Are you Kylie’s uncles?” Mia said, looking back to where Gavin had been stood. He was gone, she was talking to the wall.

He popped up suddenly from behind the counter, clutching a handful of pipe-cleaners. 

“Yes! Do you know her? Don’t tell me she shops here” he whipped round excitedly and called, “Hun, Kylie shops here!” 

“Ace!” came Hamish’s reply, and the sound of tin hitting something particularly hard, like, say, the concrete tiles of the floor. A soft “ _oops,_ ” floated out from between the shelves. 

“I didn’t know Kylie had family about, if I’m honest.” Mia said, foregoing manners for curiosity. She thought of solemn, thoughtful Kylie, with her beaded bands from wrist to bicep. She couldn't imagine her interactions with these the palava of these two. 

Gavin propped a hip on the counter and shot her a more strained smile. He examined his cuticles and popped his bubblegum, then said - “Can’t say I’m surprised. All got a bit strained a few years back. We’ve missed her. Well. You know how family is.” his eyelashes flickered towards the desk space at her elbow, then back to her. They were open and clear eyes, the colour of a brewing sky.

“You look liker her, I think -” Mia said, and swallowed. Gavin smiled again. 

Her phone shifted against her thigh as she rebalanced from foot to foot in thought of what to say next. Jacob was better than her at customer service. 

Eventually she settled on, “I’m sure she’ll be glad to have you visit.” 

Gavin waved away the compliment with a limp hand, expression clouded. 

“She will if we bribe her with a gift.” Hamish said, emerging from the aisle with a cord of blue string wrapped around his palm. 

Gavin clapped his hands, “Yes! We heard she still loves her stuff!” 

“Stuff?” echoed Mia. 

“Stuff!” said Hamish, “You know, bit of glue, bit of stiching, bit of beads, we’re getting her the stuff.” 

“Crafts,” added Gavin, happily. 

The pair of them looked at her expectantly. 

She could sell them anything, she thought, wildly. She could send them on their way with the most expensive items and pop off for a coffee, meagre revenue done for the day. 

But she wasn’t like that. 

“Actually, Kylie usually just likes the glue we stock. Doesn’t run in water or anything. It’s Gorilla. She makes little boxes with it with with hinges.”

Gavin and Hamish said at once, “We’ll take it.” 

No more customers had arrived, so Mia chatted a bit more with them as they watched her wrap their purchase. She demonstrate the choreography of the wrapping once again, at Gavin’s request, he seemed mesmerised with the folding patterns. 

She asked them about Kylie, when she was younger. Hamish said, “She was about the same, beautiful, outdoorsy, quiet, clever.” Then he fell quiet, looked sad. 

Mia frowned sympathetically. She knew it was awful, feeling like a stranger to family. 

“If you really want to catch up, you could ask her about Aisha,” she offered. 

“A lady love?” Gavin said, gesturing between himself and Hamish, “Quelle surprise!”

Mia laughed. 

“How did they meet?”, asked Hamish. 

“Oh, in here actually, they both craft. Aisha makes this lovely jewellery she sells online, it’s all recycled.” Mia said. 

Hamish and Gavin shared a look. 

“Cool”, Hamish said. 

“Very Cool,” Gavin agreed. 

She hadn't had such involved customers all week. Mia felt herself relax even further. 

“I’ve seen them both in The Hen, just down by the square. You’ll probably find them there this time or same time tomorrow.” she said, feeling a newfound pride that she knew the town, and the insular routines of time there, a little better than she thought. 

Gavin beamed. “That’s a great idea!” he said, bringing his hands together and rocking on his toes. 

Hamish stepped forward, shook her hand again with a warm squeeze and grabbed the wrapped package of string, beads and glue that they had bought. A substantially generous tip lay on the counter when he withdrew his hand. 

“Ta for putting up with us.” he said.

“Oh, it’s no trou” -

Gavin abruptly leant forward on his elbow and she watched as his thumb brushed against the frame she kept on the counter. It was a picture of her and Jacob at the storefront last summer, shaking hands and beaming. She looked back and held Gavin’s look, felt a bit pinned, his eyes gone slate-like. She listened as he said:

“Call your brother about your weekend plans, about the last film you saw, about the restaurant you like here, he does want to hear from you. He just hated this shop.” 

Then Gavin hopped back from the counter, lifted a hand in a silent goodbye and swept out of the shop. Hamish waved sweetly at her in the ensuing silence, visibly considering whether he should say something, then shook his head and disappeared out the door too. 

The bell clanged harshly against the doorframe. And Mia Magoli was alone again. She closed her mouth with a snap and sunk back down to her stool. She looked at the picture for a minute, and then reached into her pocket to pick up her phone. 

—

Away from the sea breeze and further into the morning, it was a fully fledged summer day. They nearly gave themselves heatstroke in the haste to get down to the town square from HobbyCrafts. Eventually they both stopped to breathe and decided to head over into the shadow of a water fountain. 

There were cherubs carved into the stonework, water plunging down from their feet and from their little bows. Out of nowhere, Sherlock felt his feet trip over each other, a sudden lash of bile in his mouth. He stared at the statues — little grey empty eyes, boy faces stained with damp.

John wiped sweat from his own forehead and looked over, “You okay?” he asked. 

_(‘Maintain eye contact’)_

_(Drowned Re’ -_

_No_. 

Sherlock put his hand behind his back and dug the thumbnail into the skin there, and smiled at John. “We make a good couple, Hun” he said, feeling the sensation come back into his fingers as John laughed. Sherlock bent and used his then moot straw sunhat to scoop up water from the rippling stone receptacle. 

He flung the glasses to the back of his head and brought the hat to his face. 

“Next time, I’m naming us. Don’t drink that.” John said. 

A pause. “I’m not.” said Sherlock — through a mouthful of water. 

John sighed and dabbed at the sweat from his neckline. The square was pretty. If a bit toneless. 

The sun bounced off stretch after stretch of speckled stonework and lit up the local attractions. Most notably: an olde world cafe, a squat church door, and a chalk drawing of a chicken printed onto a blackboard out by the pub in the corner.   
A kid was running rings around an ice cream van parked between some nearby benches. In the middle of the town square there was a sundial etched into the stone, and there an old women spun on the spot and swatted at a gang of pigeons that were hopping hot-footed between the cracks in the cobblestones toward her shopping bag.

Sherlock abandoned the hat and instead cupped a handful of water and rubbed it into his skin, still feeling hot, like he couldn't cool down. The smell of the ceramic that was burnt into the air of the Craft shop wouldn't leave him. He tugged his shirt from his chest where it was sticking. 

John’s hand pressed, hot, against his shoulder, almost painful for some reason. Sherlock bit back a flinch. 

“I’m updating Greg,” he muttered and Sherlock nodded, frowning at the sensitive energy that was crackling across his skin. He watched as John marched away out of the square to use his phone without eavesdroppers.

“Stop it,” Sherlock muttered to himself. He splashed more water in his face, then looked up, exhaled slowly and resolutely ignored the empty eyes of the stone boys as he carried on drinking.

“How did you know she would think Kylie was still alive?” John said, suddenly back by his side. Sherlock coughed, nearly spilling water on the street. That was quick. Too quick? Was he losing time?

A slight furrow appeared at John’s brow as Sherlock recovered and cleared his throat - “she didn't have a newspaper on the desk or a letter-box in the door, her phone’s frequently off to avoid her brother, and she’d been there all morning. The only people who were close to her and local enough to pop in and tell her the news are Kylie and Aisha. Her two favourite customers. One of which is currently lying dead on that beach and the other very likely in that pub over here."

“Brilliant,” John said, smiling softly Sherlock’s way. 

Sherlock shrugged. “Rather sad, actually - come along,” he said, shaking sweat out of his dark hair and setting off toward _The Hen_. 

—

  
The pub was only a quarter-full but loud, a few football fans in the main room hollering at a small, apologetic looking television bolted at a squiffy angle against the wall. The rafters were low hanging and grizzly with splinters. 

Sherlock ducked and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He dragged his weight down to his laurels, amending his gait to a slightly buckle-kneed slouch as they approached the bar, more casual, just like that. 

John pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek in a bid not to laugh fondly. He turned his face into the helpful draft that hovered between the beams of the low ceiling. He thought of his Dad, only for a second, as the smell of stout struck him. Then he moved on.

Sherlock tried to catch the attention of the barman but his voice was lost in the roar of sports fans as someone on the flickering TV scored. Sherlock's lip curled irritably and he opened his mouth again, this time unsticking his hand from the bar to wave too.

The noise of the room rose again, and Sherlock shot John a hapless frown. John grinned and clapped him on the shoulder, using Sherlock’s body as leverage to lean over the bar and _OI MATE YEAH HERE TA THANKS TA TWO PINTS YEAH GRAND TA_ their way to success. 

The girl that served them was younger than the other guys who milled between customers, with a tattoo of a butterfly that spanned her hand. Sherlock seemed fascinated by the wings as they flexed with the movement of the tap. She had a stolen, tired look, but seemed polite enough. John saw her rubbing the corner of her eye with her knuckle, where it looked red, and thought maybe she wasn’t wearing her glasses. He half watched the foam despite himself, checking the length.

The girl saw him watching and smirked, “never had a problem with head, mate, and I’m not about to start now.” 

Sherlock’s head whipped up at that. “Sorry?” he said, aghast. 

John reached up and placed a hand on his jaw. 

“She means the foam, love.” 

“Oh,” Sherlock settled with something like a smile twitching at the girl before he craned his head to take stock of the room, already on another thought. 

To the girl, John shrugged apologetically, “bad habit, nosy drinker,” he joked. 

The girl’s eyes darted to the way Sherlock was now leaning his head practically against John’s hand. Her expression flickered, then she looked at John’s hand again and nodded to herself briskly. 

“Cool. These are on my tab, then.” she said. 

She slammed the pints down and flicked a locke of hair over her shoulder.

“What, why?” John said. 

“Gay. I mean Great. Thanks,” Sherlock said, turning and nabbing his drink in one hand before disappearing into a crowd of tourists who had just filtered in. 

The girl turned to John, “Never get fellow queers in here, on a match day too” she said, wiping her hands on the tea towel looped around her belt buckle. 

John blushed despite himself. “Right, well.”

The girl’s hands stilled. She rubbed her eyes again. “Sorry, you don’t mind do you?”

John took a large mouthful of his drink, placed it down, rolled the glass between his hands. “Um” he said. 

The bartender looked a bit uncomfortable, a touch of red on her dark skin. “Sorry - I always assume, I didn’t mean it like — if you’re not actually,” her voice growing hoarser. 

John rushed in, recognising the route of that sentence and hating its sad familiarity. 

“No, we are! We are, actually. I am.” the girl closed her eyes in relief and John smiled, “I just didn't expect such a kind gesture. That’s all.” he said. 

“No worries. Anything you need” she shrugged, and went to move back to the fridge out of someone’s way, but John, sensing a window, continued. 

“Actually, you couldn’t do me another favour? We’re looking for someone, a friend.”

The girl doubled back and leant an elbow on the bar, “Who’s that then?” she asked.

“Aisha Jones?” 

She blinked and looked at him, and John took another sip of his beer to have something to do with his face. 

When he lowered his glass, the girl’s eyebrow was raised. 

“That’s me”, she said. 

—- 

They found Sherlock on a bench seat along the back-room, as far as possible from the football activity. His legs were crossed and he was taking neat little sips from the foam. John felt a lurch in his tummy, a sort of pull, seeing the sharp, pale face and dark coat come into view between molasses of bodied and sound. Like -- there he is. There’s my person. 

It took Sherlock two seconds to notice Aisha has been crying out the back of the Pub all morning, that she wasn’t the murderer, and that the tattoo on her hand had been for Kylie. He patted the cushion next to him with a gentle authority. 

Aisha took a seat and wiped her nose with the cuff of her shirt sleeve, looking only a little less confused than new people usually did. 

John took the seat opposite and gave her a nod of encouragement. 

She was not a witness, but she was the last person to see Kylie alive. And sometimes an investigation into death was about sifting through the grains of the life lost. Aisha explained Kylie to them with such reverence, and clarity, that the other girl seemed to lift in particulates from her dead body in the sand, blowing in through the breeze and weaving through the pub-goers to settle on the three of them in a fine, delicate layer. 

Kylie met Aisha in a twitter group chat for a Netflix show, the both of them realising they were from neighbouring villages. Kylie was emancipated from her parents, she was also on Sertraline, a low dose, 50mg -- but what had really put a smile on her face was the beach. She wasn’t a great swimmer, she liked to float on her back, and sometimes Aisha would hold her head and kick them along the shoreline. They’d liked each other from the start and started dating immediately. They were both vegans, Aisha more for health benefits, but Kylie was passionate and outspoken online about the meat and fishing industry. Eventually they teamed up to sell their own crafts to raise money for the cause. A few people around town had gotten wind of it and joined in, leaving leaflets around and starting a sub-group in the local Facebpok page. In some, albeit small circles, Kylie and Aisha had even been something of an it couple. Kylie didn’t talk about her parents, preferred busy weekends, wore eye-shadow for afternoon walks, and once carved Aisha’s name onto a piece of driftwood not many metres from where she presently lay dead. 

All over now. 

John sensed Sherlock had a strong, almost certain guess, within the first few minutes of Aisha talking, his spine snapping to a straight attention and his eyes going wider. But, surprisingly, he didn’t interrupt, just sat quietly as John handed Aisha napkins and she heaved her way through all the details she could remember. 

At some point someone who looked suspiciously like a manager came closer to the table, arms folded, but John shot him such a visceral look of danger that he quickly departed back to the bar. 

When Aisha folded her face into her hands and started to make more noises than words, Sherlock calmly reached across and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. 

“You can stop now,” he said. 

He pushed his untouched beer over to her and she took it gratefully, taking massive gulps. 

“Shouldn’t even drink on shift,” she said, breathlessly, then tipped the rest of the glass back up to finish it, a tear slipping down her temple as she craned her neck. 

“You’re not on shift, you’re helping a criminal investigation,” Sherlock corrected her. 

“Is there anyone we can call?” asked John. 

She nodded. “My mum,” she said, and lifted her collar up to dab at the wetness around her cheeks and jawline. 

John nodded and took the phone when she passed it over. 

“My mum doesn't know. About us. I was going to tell her when we hit one year but,” She trailed off, looking out into the crowd. 

“That’s fine, Aisha, she only needs to know the basics,” John assured her, and nodded with his eyes on Sherlock. Sherlock’s head moved incrementally in response and John stood and excused himself to take the call. 

At the doorway the air tasted crisp, free of all the bodies inside. John moved away and walked a short way down the street, savouring the cooling gestures of the clouds. He braced his hand against a lampost while waiting for Mrs Jones to pick up. As she did, John picked his words carefully, and when the woman’s voice started to wobble and crack frantically through the line into his ear, John looked up over the Town Square and tried to see the sea through the gaps in the chimney tops. 

There was a particularly large guy brandishing his glass when John reluctantly stepped back inside _The Hen._ He had to pause to avoid getting clocked with a pale ale, and for a second, under the arms and through the moving cutlery of strangers he saw Sherlock and Aisha, their heads bowed closer together in the shadows of the far wall. 

Aisha seemed calmer, her sleeves wet with the last of the tears for now, and she nodded along as Sherlock’s mouth moved rapidly by her ear. 

They moved swiftly apart when they saw him approach, and John lifted his hands in mock surrender - “don’t worry,” he said, “just back to say that your Mum’s on the way. She sounds like she wants to give you a bit of a looking after.” 

Aisha’s face strained at something of a smile. 

“Thanks, really.” she said weakly. 

“Fresh air might be best,” John said, and went to fetch her coat. 

He wondered if they’d be whispering again when he searched them out on the street, but whatever conversation they’d stumbled into was clearly in its final throes. Aisha was sat on one of the benches, her head in her hands. Sherlock was stood by the edge of the seat, staring straight up at a flurry of seagulls whooping down highway of rooftops love street level. One of his hands was placed just barely on Aisha’s shoulder, his fingers brushing the material of her work-shirt. Apart from that, they showed no sign they were even aware of each other. 


	3. Chapter 3

“Are you going to ask?” Sherlock said, later, from beside him.

They were in a taxi, Lestrade just off the phone — the Inspector gladdened but not surprised to know that they had found Aisha and that Sherlock had figured out the address and occupation of the most likely suspect.

“Do you want me to ask?” John said. He was trying to check it was the grey outline of sand dunes he could see out through the bracken. They were driving on a thin back road around the edge of the town, back down to the sea line, and there was barely room for the Cab, the bristles from the outlying fields knocking against the window as they passed. It was the same road Lestrade and Donovan would be waiting within the hour, hopefully ready to storm the scene if need be.

Sherlock bristled. “I can hear you thinking about it.”

“Ok,” John said, and turned to his partner.

Why did they always seem to have the most important conversations in cars?

“She said she wished she could ‘forget the whole thing’” Sherlock said. His fingers were curled into a light fist that he brought to his bottom lip, it muffled his voice.

It had been a long day, so John didn’t get it at first.

He turned away from the horizon and faced Sherlock fully, searching. “Do you think she told us everything?” he said, worried for a minute that Aisha had tried to confess something more complex to Sherlock before they left her in the open arms of her mother and flagged down their taxi from town.

Sherlock shook his head, eyes fixed on the seat in front of him. He reached out suddenly and pulled at a loose strip of the upholstery of its headrest. It made a steady ripping sound as Sherlock stretched the threads apart and John coughed loudly into his elbow to make sure the cabbie didn't hear.

Sherlock sat back, rolling the material between his fingers until it was a tight ball, then bouncing it off his knee and back up into his hand.

“I thought it was prudent to assure her that trying to dissociate from the situation would probably make it worse,” he said, eyes flicking to John then back to his ball, then up to John again when he realised John’s expression was warm and understanding.

John got it, even the bits Sherlock wasn’t saying.

They still hadn't discussed Sherlock’s night terrors, not the most recent, and not all the others, that had been coming thick and fast and relentlessly for the past few weeks.

They both knew what Sherlock meant. That if Aisha got what she really wanted - the chance to grow up only minimally aware of the incident - it would crawl back to her later, tenfold. It was the reason John had started every morning lately by finding Sherlock staring at the foot of the bed, whimpering and unseeing. Sherlock knew that almost every day he wept before he woke, drawn with coaxing hands backwards to lie on John’s chest and breathe again as John explained that no one else was in their room.

It was the reason John was starting to dislike this case, and all the details of it: the sea, the grief, all of it encroaching on the ground beneath their feet. It was jarring Sherlock and therefore him, like they were trying to work their way through a hedgerow of thorns.

The other side was in sight, he told himself.

“That was an important thing to say to her. She’ll be glad you did,” he told Sherlock, who nodded in response.

The headlights fell on a small wooden gate, the engine cut, and the driver said, “we’re here,” and John guessed that was that. 

—

Sherlock caught him up to speed while they lay on their stomachs in the front garden of the house.

A local fisherman, named Andrew Harken, who sold fresh produce in the market (they’d passed his ad while they approached the Hen Pub, Sherlock had observed).

A group of young adults, lead by Kylie and Aisha, who handed out leaflets on veganism on the Sunday mornings that the butchers and Andrew set up their wares.

The wounds on Kylie’s torso weren’t made with a normal blade, they were made with a hook - the gash on her neck with a fishing line.

This was a local man, one who struck up casual conversation with the students when they got into debates; a familiar face, who never once revealed the undercurrent of decimating rage that overcame him at the sight of them.

And Andrew was moving out of the house they were currently staking out, was moving soon. Sherlock had seen the property in the window of the estate agents outside Hobbycraft while John was paying. He had remembered it because it was the only property that was moving in the market, and a sea-view at that; a commodity highly sought and rarely let go of. Perhaps a getaway for the inhabitant then, after the one too many attacks had started to show up as more of a local pattern than intended. A hunch that Sherlock had spun into a lead when Aisha had relived the funny encounters she and Kylie had shared on market Sundays. 

Perhaps Andrew hadn't intended to kill them all, Sherlock proposed. Perhaps the first time, he had simply been walking on the beach, his equipment in hand, and stumbled across one of the activists swimming or sunbathing. Perhaps they had re-ignited their Sunday debates, as unassuming as ever. Perhaps his rage had only briefly drowned out his neighbourly manner, as he accompanied the first victim from the shoreline and struck when they weren’t looking. Perhaps his real nature emerged, when he destroyed their strangled bodies and trussed them up like Shanty characters.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Perhapses - John knew - always wasped around Sherlock’s head until he reached the definitive.

What was certain, was that the grass was soaking the front of John’s jacket, and that next to him was the shape of Sherlock peering, cat-like, between the thicket at the house. Andrew’s home was cliff-top, facing the sea, with shuttered windows that were left a dull, water-logged brown, and a garden overgrown and riddled with rocks and cigarette butts. The whole thing was quite Poe.

“So where is he now?” John asked, trying to be heard over the echoing chorus of cicadas that chattered around them.

Sherlock hmmed and shifted onto his other elbow. “I’d say he usually leaves town for a bit right after an attack, trying to create distance, as if thats not noticeable in itself. Idiot.”

John laughed lightly. “Right, friends not questioning that already?” he asked.

In the fading sun, Sherlock’s smirk made shadows dance on the dip of his mouth, lingering on his jaw and his temple the way he angled a look at John, “What friends?” he said, “The only tyre tracks outside the gate were from our cab until we covered them, and judging by the state of his front door, he’s hardly the type to tidy up after visitors.”

“Just mates with his rod then.”

“Oh, hush, John.”

But they both had to tuck their heads into the weeds to stop their laughter echoing out across the breeze.

The sound of a car pulling up to the driveway made them swiftly silent, and they hunkered down further into the grass to wait.

John closed his eyes and tasted salt. The gulls were singing loudly as footsteps crunched closer and closer, and John opened his eyes to find dark green and condensation and Sherlock’s pupils slits where he stared through the garden at the visible parts of the Fisherman. John caught the bob of a tall pole and a cap and then nothing as he lowered his head again and the door slammed shut.

Sherlock let out a loud breath that seemed to catch at the end. 

John looked over, surprised.

“Are you okay?” he said.

The closer he looked the more his own senses went onto high alert. Sherlock’s teeth were actually gritted, his chest rising falling, pressing rapidly against the ground.

“He was carrying her clothes in his right hand, John,” he whispered.

“Ok. Ok, so you were right,” John soothed, “Good, so its nearly done.”

Sherlock didn't reply, leaning back onto his haunches to stare openly at the front door just metres away. He seemed entirely changed — his breathing completely strained and his hair wild from lying in the water-clogged ground.

John struggled between frantically trying to pull Sherlock down flat and not wanting to irritate him any further. He never did this, they never did this, they always kept their reactions to themselves until the business was closed - it was one of the most useful skills Sherlock had imparted on John about solving crime.

“We’ll call Lestrade and Donovan and get them up here. You need to sit back down, right now” John said, but Sherlock’s hand clamped down cold on his wrist and startled him.

“Yellow, her T-shirt on the mobile phone background. There’s blood on it too. It’s still wet.” Sherlock said, words disjointed, and John made an agreeing noise like they were confirming the weather, trying to appease the detective.

Then he remembered the honesty that they had promised each other.

“Look,” he held Sherlock’s chin and turned his face gently. “I think this whole thing is affecting you, terribly, it has been all day, and we don’t need to talk about why, but I hate it too. Let’s move away, _now_ , Sherlock. Call Lestrade and get home, okay? To Rosie.”

And it was a cheap shot, bringing the baby girl into it - but the truth was there was no peace in Sherlock like the one John and he shared at the flat with her and each other. It seemed for a second like it would work too, as Sherlock’s eyebrows drew tight in distress and he looked like he wanted to take John’s hand and run far away, which was better than whatever rash alternative was choking him up from the inside.

Then the front door opened, and footsteps came skidding towards them, and by the time John realised they had been seen through a window the bottom of Andrew’s boot came down hard on his fingers.

He and Sherlock cried out in unison, John of pain, Sherlock of outrage, and suddenly Andrew and Sherlock were falling backwards into the grass, dragging each other through the dirt and throwing punches.

“For _fuck_ sake,” John hissed, and pressed the speed dial to Lestrade’s phone with numb fingers as he threw himself into the fray.


	4. Chapter 4

It was only later, in the Ambulance, that they managed to work out what had happened. Between all of them - Lestrade, Donovan, John, and Sherlock too once he woke up — they fashioned a sequence of sorts, albeit a murky one. 

John remembered: the sound of grunting and fists hitting flesh, pulling at the back of Andrew Harken’s thick leather jacket as the man tried to push his entire weight onto Sherlock’s collarbone.  
  
Then Harken’s face staring up at his, and the dot of dirt at his temple that slowly grew wet and slippery with blood as John hit him over and over, angry in a way he had almost entirely learnt not to be anymore, so furious that he might have kept hitting until the man’s skull became a nest for the worms. 

Sherlock scrabbling at his wrists, pushing against arm as he drew it back, begging him - “ _Stop_ , John, he’s down, stop it.”

Hating the crack of panic in Sherlock’s voice, letting go, for just a second, to fix it. 

The whisper of the jacket as Harken slipped his arms free and took off running. Sherlock’s shoes slipping slightly in the mud as he went after him, the end of his coat and his long legs disappearing around the corner - faster than John could catch. 

Dizziness, the path dusty with bird droppings - and for one strangely vivid moment, a red Cornetto ice-cream wrapper glinting out of the shadows.

Lestrade shouting down the phone - still on in John’s back pocket - as the doctor ran as fast as he dared. The way growing steeper, his footsteps stumbling blindly, heart jerking with every glance at the drop below. The sea careening up the cliff face. 

Knowing after five minutes in that he had lost them. 

The feeling in his naval, a dread knot leading him on. Picking his way carefully down the slopes, hearing the water get closer, the waves pounding up in arches that peppered John with cold. 

John remembered his chest hurting, unable to inhale properly, as he approached an empty clearing through the ferns. And being absolutely, awfully certain that he was about to find Sherlock hurt; that they had reached an apex of the forces that had been pulling Sherlock into darkness for longer than they had cared to admit, that the very worst case was happening, the thing they had all feared ever since Mycroft had leant forward on his chair and whispered the word _family._

The case was only the last push. 

John remembered walking hesitantly toward the edge of the cliff, breath panting. The closer he had gotten, the more the wind tore the oxygen right out of him and on over the sea, until he felt like he was part of the air, tugged unerringly forward and forward and - 

— looking over the edge. Rocks. Rivulets of sand running in bleached vains between the dozens and dozens of hard, wet rocks. Andrew Harken’s twisted body, that he swiftly ignored. His eyes skimming right over him, in search of a shock of dark hair, of thin, balletic arms and legs, a raggedy blue scarf. 

He couldn't find him. 

Please God where is he. Where is he. Where is he - 

A strangled noise, somewhere behind him. John had turned and run toward it. 

Seeking, finding. 

That’s when the rest got hazy. 

-

Sherlock remembered Andrew Harken jumping. 

He would have turned away, but it happened too quickly. One minute Andrew was wavering at the other end of the clearing, the next he was gone. The both of them had been breathing heavily, Andrew bent with his hands cupped at his knees, Sherlock clutching his chest with one hand and reaching out with the other. 

He’d thought he could de-escalate, prove to Andrew that his fate had already been sealed with his illogically thought out murder of Kylie, so soon after the others. That for a man living with homicidal outbursts, there could be comfort in the machinations of the legal system now already turning. 

Instead, Andrew had spat in Sherlock’s direction, turned on his heels and stepped right off the edge of the cliff, sailing out of view in complete silence.

After Andrew fell, there had been a strangely clear moment where a constellation of birds rose up and up from beneath the last lip of glass; they had drifted away into the evening - as if in answer to the suicide.

Sherlock remembered finding, for some reason, that he could no longer stand, and dropping slowly into a crouch, then a sitting position.

His nails had dug into the bog between the ferns and coming with clumpfuls of dirt and sand, scraping at his palms. 

His legs had stopped working so he had lain on his back, and when he heard someone making retching noises he thought it might have been him, but he didn't have the energy to sit up. 

There was a sensation like pins, being inserted slowly all over his body, from the toes, up his shins through his abdomen, and around his jaw, and there was no way to swallow, or breathe — as the pins had slotted in and pierced the spaces under his skin. 

The wind was moving the sea down below, and the trees somewhere to his left, and the clouds that he could see sweeping up over the palest outline of approaching stars. The day was really drawing to a close, the elements rising for a night of storming. 

_'Hello.'_

Someone had whispered it, right by his ear, and he had tried to turn on a stiff neck, his head lolling to the side in the wet grass. 

Sherlock remembered realising Victor Trevor lying next to him. 

He would have said hello but he wasn’t able to speak past the closing of his throat. 

Victor was clear in the evening light, as solid and detailed as the bushes and the sound of the waves. When he turned to face Sherlock and smiled, his left tooth was missing, still. His hair was clementine and stuck to his forehead in whorls, still. He had his plaid jacket on, his hands folded neatly on his stomach, as if in a sleeping position. 

The pins were being cranked further and further, stabbing at his stomach and chest. Sherlock had a question but Victor wasn’t helping, only watching with a curious expression as Sherlock choked. A high ringing started somewhere unseen - louder than everything. 

Victor moved his mouth again, and Sherlock read the shape of the word.

_‘Will.’_

And the world went dark, and there was nothing else. 

-

Lestrade and Donovan remembered it pretty much the same way as each other. 

It had taken them less than twenty minutes since John’s call to coordinate with the radio team and jump out the car onto the track to Harken’s house. 

When they’d heard Sherlock call for John to _‘Stop'_ amidst a mixed chorus of men yelling, they’d picked up the pace even more, Donovan hiking up her jeans and half-sprinting up the path. 

“Sally, remember I’m middle-aged,” Lestrade had managed to call at her receding back, his chest puffing, but he’d still reached the top of the hill in his own record time. 

Harken’s garden was empty. The cliffwalk too, was empty, but also riled up and splattered with a pattern of footsteps and trampled weeds. 

Eventually John must have hung up on them, or the phone knocked against something. They made their way to the top of the hill in silence, the only sounds their panting and a sharp click as Sally drew out her taser and clipped it to her belt loop. 

When they got to the clearing, it was Lestrade who had - like John before him - feared something entirely different as he'd picked his away over to the edge of the steep drop with a grim face. 

Sally had gone to cover the perimeter, moving slowly along the treeline.

Although she technically found Sherlock and John first, she was so off guard that she had almost completely blanked, freezing up except to shout “ _GREG_ ”- who came running. Then the both of them had stood frozen at the same sight. 

Sherlock had been on the ground, the whites of his eyes facing the sky. He was seizing as harshly as any fit they had seen on emergency calls. At some points, his back arched nearly fully off the ground, his arms and legs at angles and twisting in painful looking jerks. His throat was pulling in a taught line, horrible, guttural noises fighting their way throughout the seizures relaxing and clenching at his vocal cords.

The only reason they hadn't seen his head moving the same way was because John had the detective’s upper body against his own chest, supporting him from behind. His palms were flat to Sherlock’s temples, keeping the pale face turned sideways in the recovery position as the rest of him writhed. His fingers had been streaking gently through Sherlock’s hair, his own head bent low to where Sherlock would have seen had his eyes not been rolled back. The doctor had obviously been mustering up some comforting words, whispered in the space between between Sherlock's pained face and his before the other two arrived. 

When John had looked up, Sally had noticed how his face was fixed on neutral, the calm in his voice when he told them, “Tonic-clonic, I don’t how long before I found him, but it’s been about two minutes since. Get an ambulance.” 

Lestrade had made the call, feeling sick as he’d paced along the grass and relayed John’s steady stream of information and facts, measurements and details, called confidentially over the sound of Sherlock’s cries. 

Sally remembered waiting without breathing, knelt by the both of them as Sherlock continued to fit for what felt like eons. 

When blood had started to bubble at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, she had crossed her arms over her chest and rocked once, completely at her wits end. 

John had smoothed his hand over Sherlock’s forehead and not moved his eyes from Sherlock as he said, “It’s okay, Sally. He’s just bitten his tongue, I think he’s nearly finished anyway.” 

And sure enough, as Donovan leant forward and dabbed at the blood on Sherlock’s mouth with her sleeve, she felt the detective’s breath stutter against her palm, the first full exhale they’d heard him make without choking in minutes. It vocalised slightly into a whine and then Sherlock slumped in John’s arms, eyes closed and brow furrowed in disapproval at the events of the evening, even as he clearly drifted on the cusp of conciousness. The spasms in his limbs slowed almost to a full stop. 

Hanging up the phone, Lestrade had turned just in time to see John lift Sherlock’s limp hand to his mouth and kiss the slender width of his wrist. 

“Alright. It’s alright, love. It’s over now, I’ve got you.” he muttered, arms tightening around Sherlock’s shoulder, his head falling forward to rest against his partner’s.

Sally slumped onto her side, breathing out harshly. “Jesus shit,” she’d said, John and Lestrade making somber grunts of agreement. 

The last thing of note, really, apart from the body at the bottom of the cliff that had to be collected - was Sherlock’s grand re-entrance into semi-awareness. It had happened when the air ambulance arrived. Donovan had tilted her head up to watch the dance of helicopter blades decent down closer, one hand holding her hair to her head. 

Lestrade, looking for something to do, had rolled up his sleeves and made hand gestures trying to guide the paramedics in, as if Sherlock - limp in John’s arms - wasn't the blatant target for assessment right beside them. 

As the ground shook beneath them, Sherlock’s eyes flickered, and his hand, Sally saw - came up shakily over his shoulder, wavering in the bluster of air traffic. Sherlock’s fingers splayed gently against the top of John’s head, and patted their twice.

John’s shoulders heaved in response - the doctor buckling at the glimpse of a recognition, and Sherlock had kept his hand stretched behind him, holding John's jaw, before he couldn't keep his arm up anymore and it dropped, lifeless, at his side. 


	5. Chapter 5

John’s hands shook sometimes. The daily tremors were gone - had been for a long time. But when life found ways of hurting him anew, he half expected to feel the shaking start up — an unending itch at the centre of his palm that he often remembered in dreams.

As it happened, his hands didn't shake when he held Sherlock Holmes.

Not when he helped the EMT’s lift Sherlock’s body onto a stretcher. Not when he cupped Sherlock’s hands and blew warmth onto his fingers and stared at the lines of his heart rate lighting up the dark metal interior of the helicopter. Not when Sally and Greg became specks on the side of the earth and John was left alone, outside of the team of technicians wiring his partner up — even then John closed his fingers around Sherlock’s ankle and squeezed small notes in morse code with a strong, sure grip.

His hand didn't shake when he lifted his phone to his ear as he ran, following the gurney in through the doors of the hospital as far as they’d let him before they ushered Sherlock away through swing doors for a myriad of tests.

“Hullo dear, been in the wars again?”

Mrs Hudson’s voice was a godsend. John flopped down onto a waiting room chair and smiled for the first time in hours. He nestled the phone closer to his ear, wanting to try and catch a bit of background 221B frequency through the relentless noises of hospital; footsteps, vending machines, trolleys squaring on linoleum, the odd exclamation echoing through the snap of curtains open and shut.

“Yeah,” John breathed, “But we’re going to be okay.”

-

Mycroft met him at the Hospital Cafe while Sherlock was sleeping in his room.

“Have you seen him?” was the first thing Mycroft said, as John slipped into the chair opposite and took the waiting cup of coffee with a grateful nod.

John heard the unspoken statement: When it came to Sherlock, Mycroft had learnt to trust John’s observation of him above all others.

“He’s okay, weak, and confused, but okay. He made jokes,” John said.

Sherlock hadn't actually made a joke per say, but when the medical team had left the room he had explained to John which of them were shagging with a weary, but admirably cheeky, expression until John laughed - which, to the two of them, was as good as a joke.

“I took the liberty of reading the leading practitioner’s notes,” Mycroft said

“Course you did.”

“Do you concur?”

Mycroft pressed his palms together to make a thin triangle upon which his chin rested. His eyes were clear and narrowed with concentration.

Big brother wants to fix it.

John sipped his coffee and nodded. “No electrical activity to cause alarm on the scan, no neurological blemishes or symptoms. His brain’s a Ford Ferrari, performance wise. But, guess we already knew that.”

Mycroft sat back with a pinched smile, his face becoming dour as he stirred his tea.

“I know. A Psychomatic seizure is, frankly, shit in its own ways. They make up a third of all fit related referrals but there’s next to nothing in the way of treatment,” John said.

Mycroft sighed and rubbed at a line of his forehead with his thumb. “Always a contrary boy, always,” he looked up, “they won’t deeply examine why he suffered this attack?”

John leant forward, touched by the fact that they might again function as a team for Sherlock’s sake. “Mycroft, he’s a recovered drug addict with multiple overdoses on his record. There’s patterns of psychosis, of severe dissociation. Any nurse could take a page from his file that ticks the box for psychologically triggered seizures: the scars, life-long injuries from blunt-force trauma, bullets, evidence of prolonged torture techniques. They already think they know _why._ ”

Their drinks were shaking as John’s knee bounced and knocked their table from beneath.

“What do _you_ think, John?” Mycroft said calmly.

John’s knee stilled.

“I think he’s a survivor. The strongest man I’ll ever meet. But your sister absolutely destroyed him when his life was just getting started, and she’ll destroy the life he deserves if we don’t help him.”

Mycroft nodded, unflinching at the boldness of John’s words. He’d heard it all before, thought it to himself in the dead of the night. Nothing anyone could say about his siblings could surprise him, after all, he had carried the truth of the matter before Sherlock and John had ever known.

“Are we assuming he’ll accept the help?”

John smiled grimly into his coffee. “You need to acknowledge how hard he’s been trying to be okay, for his whole life. More than anyone. More than you, or me,” he replied.

“Trying his hardest between bouts of self-harm and destruction?”

“Hey.” John snapped, and Mycroft sulked back in his seat looking for all the world a mawkish prep boy in someone else’s suit.

“Grow up, Holmes. You’re a genius, yeah? You might as well acknowledge the loop between things Sherlock can’t cope with and the things he does to himself.”

“And the things he allows others to do unto him.” Mycroft said, Iceman for a moment, the cold radiating off him into John’s veins as they both briefly danced with the memory of the day John beat Sherlock bloody himself.

John blinked back some tears, expecting no pity in Mycroft’s face and not finding any either. Mycroft knew that Sherlock and John had attended private couple counsel sessions at the beginning of their relationship for that precise reason; that John had no intention of being anything of the person that his father had been to his mother.

It was a low blow, but Mycroft was stressed, and John didn’t mind being scolded for the worst thing he had ever done now and again.

John dashed his eye with his knuckle and said, brightly, “I’m intending to be the person your brother thinks I am, for him. Are you going to do the same? Or shall we both sit here and talk about all the ways we’ve hurt him, because he’s waiting for us to go in there and tell him how we can make his life easier right now.”

“Conceded.” Mycroft said, with a curl of his lip.

John almost wanted to wave his napkin in a white flag, but the mood was tenuous. He finished his coffee and put the cup down on the table with more force than he meant to.

“Look,” he said, “there’s not a medicative response. Not like with epilepsy. It’s basically a CBT referral - which he already had, and that didn’t exactly go as we’d hoped.”

Unlike John, who now took to therapy with the same rigerous enthusiasm he had for team sport - Sherlock had been increasingly frazzled by their attempts to coax him into a one on one session, where he’d have to talk entirely about himself.

He’d locked himself in 221C for a week, only coming out to do Rosie’s hair and watch Peppa Pig with her, until John conceded that he could leave his partner to make an appointment when he was ready and not before - and stopped talking about it.

But Sherlock never did go. Instead he tried to do it all; make the great game go fast, make the plates spin - perfecting Rosie’s life, lighting up John’s, and completely neglecting the growing hemorrage of trauma he had reckoned only the same month John and Rosie had moved back in.

-

Mycroft was frowning thoughtfully at a drop of milk on the table.

“There’s a professor. A woman. One of our Mother’s university collective. She specialises in post-traumatic treatment. Children. Adults.”

John’s chest started to hurt. Oh, Mycroft.

Sensing the other man melting, Mycroft bristled.

“Mummy mentioned her. She’s noticed Sherlock is quieter than before at our gatherings. I think she’s wanted to tell him about the opportunity herself, but she struggles to speak to him.”

“But she wants him to go to this woman, the specialist?”

“We all do, she’s considered masterful in her field.”

John threw his coffee cup over Mycroft’s shoulder into the bin, “Well why didn’t you say so?” he smiled.

Mycroft rolled his eyes and brought his tea to his lips, “habit, I suppose.” he said, and blew.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’ll ask you to sit forward and fix your seatbelt one more time,” his mother told him.

He ignored her and pushed a small hand against the back window, his fingers drawing downturned little lines around the receding figure of a red-haired boy.

At the end of the lane, Victor lifted an arm one last time, jumping frantically to be seen, and William rose up to his knees and leant almost over the back of his seat into the car boot in an attempt to wave back.

“William. _Sit down,”_ his mother snapped.

He sat. sighed. Victor was gone, anyway. Out of sight as their car turned into the shadows of the neat, suburb syndicated hedgerows.

“We’re leaving him behind. We’re dreadful,” he said solemnly.

He slumped forward, resting his full weight on his seatbelt and letting his head loll woefully, blinking when the corner of the polyester pressed into the tender skin of his neck.

“We’re not leaving anyone behind. We’re going to have a lovely time in Roehampton watching Myc win his chess tournament. You can tell your Trevor chap all about it when we’re back,” his father explained, not lowering the paperback he’d cracked open the minute the engine started running.

William sighed again, a long, huffy one, and narrowed his eyes at the space between the front seats. When neither parent turned around to look at him, he nestled in on himself and slowly pressed the pad of his thumb against his remaining bottom teeth - considering sucking it if no one was actually watching.

They pulled onto the motorway: traffic barriers, and green fields cordoned off from the road. William stared up at the sky through the bottom of the window, trying his damnedest to count every telephone pole that whipped past as they made their way forward.

He’d promised Victor he would. His friend had asked that William recount all the things he saw on the trip, so that Victor himself could picture where he’d been.

He imagined when he saw Victor again he might greet him with the astonishing number like “Hello, Victor. I’m back. I counted 1456 telephone poles for you when we drove under the wires to Roehampton.”

When he lost count, he couldn’t help but kick his feet in frustration, growing against the thumb in his mouth.

His father peered at him through the gap in the headrest. “Alright, you. You might have a little sleep like your sister,” he said, gently.

William looked at his Eurus. She was limp in the seat next to him, her head turned away, a plait tucked neatly over her shoulder and her ankles crossed.

He looked back at his Father, “She’s not asleep, daddy.”

“Shush. She is.”

William frowned, “she’s pretending,” he said - loudly.

“Well perhaps you should pretend as well,” his mother said, knocking sharply on the wheel with her knuckles.

William slunk back into his seat. His father gave him a wink and made a zipping motion across his lips, which William copied. They all went back to looking away from each other and drove silently on for the next ten minutes.

William closed his eyes. If he tried, he could pretend he was part of the car - a headlight, or a bolt in the wheel - something quaking with fire power as they careened over the road.

He clenched his fists as they bumped over of a pothole and ground his teeth when they braked for a lorry - his skin feeling fried with the quiet and the enclosure.

Victor would have had a good game, something they could do while everyone ignored them. He would have to ask him for next time - or better yet, invite him to hide as a secret under the spare coats in the car-boot, just like the stowaways they read about.

He could pretend Victor was there now. Just a stretch away, giggling under his breath.

A secret. It made him smile as he did indeed fall asleep.

Until a sharp pain made him lurch awake sometime later. Disorientated, he sat up and knocked his chest into the stiff line of his seatbelt.

Father was asleep himself, the book folded over his knee. Mother was tapping her nails against the radio and arguing back at the tinny voice of the traffic report.

He looked down at his knee, which was burning - and found Eurus’ hand there. The tip of her nails were hooked underneath his skin, and blood was beading where she pushed her fingers down.

He wanted to cry out but the noise wouldn’t move past his sternum, burning there like a mouthful of water he had swallowed too fast.

His eyes followed the movements of the hand scratching with sure, silent movement into the top of his shin. Reluctantly he glanced over. His sister’s head was turned away like before, her plait still neatly tied on the shoulder of her summer dress. But, there, at the bit of her cheek just visible, was a small, close-lipped smile.

“Wake up everyone, we’re nearly there,” their mother said.

His sister’s hand detached from his leg and curled into her lap, the bits of blood under her nails hidden, like it hadn’t happened.

Not wanting to see the open cuts she’d left on his leg, William shuffled away and wound down his window, sticking his head out. The wind dried the damp on his cheeks.

His mother started shouting, maybe for him to sit down, which was all she seemed to say today. The roar of the vehicles muffled her voice, like the stinging of his knee, like everything else. William opened his mouth and eyes wide, turning his head this way and that.

Beyond the next line of cars over there was a telephone pole - they were passing it.

Victor was expecting a number. William looked back and counted, out loud, _“One”._

He let the wind snatch the word away, sending it back home.


	7. Chapter 7

Mycroft seen to, John headed back to Sherlock’s room alone.

The air was heavy with the rotations of machinery, Sherlock wired up and very still in the middle. A blue blanket was kicked loose at his feet, one pale arm flung over his head in sleep. John carefully moved the arm down to Sherlock’s side and kissed his temple. He’d already been examined and tested in every position possible, but there was a reason the detective preferred to wear long sleeves in public and the last thing he needed was funny looks from unprofessionals when they saw his faded track marks.

John moved to pull open the curtains and crank the small window open, his shoulders relaxing at the rush of cool air and some weak light from the hospital gardens. When he turned back, Sherlock lay his side, watching him with a small frown.

“My brother constantly assuming you prefer coffee over tea is just one of his flaws,” he said, voice croaky.

John took a seat and brushed his hand through Sherlock’s curls, quickly checking his forehead while he was at it. A bit flushed, but nothing concering.

“Think he’s going on what I need, not what I want. You mind coffee breath?” John said.

Sherlock shook his head and John bent low, and they kissed for a slow, tender minute, close mouthed and soft.

When Sherlock’s heart moniter started to pitch in, John snorted and made to move back. Sherlock gripped fast to his collar, pulled him back once more for a resounding smack on the lips - and leant back onto the pillow.

“When can we leave?”

“Now, actually.” John said.

Sherlock’s eyebrows shot to his hairline and jumped up a little to lean on his elbows - “What, really?” he said, disarmed at the lack of discipline. 

John smiled tightly. “Yeah,” he said, “they wanted to talk you through it, but I told them I’m your doctor. Mycroft’s dealing with the rest.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, “that’s…suspiciously convenient.” he said.

And here came the hard bit.

John exhaled and patted his knees hard with the flat of his hands, bracing. “Yeah, well, we’ll be collecting a prescription on our way out. Sertraline.”

Sherlock’s face shuttered. “Ah - John, I thi - ”

Ever the soldier, John charged ahead. “And there’s appointments available from next week, with this person, if you want it.”

At that he took the business card that Mycroft had given to him and placed it delicately on Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock’s fingers slowly emerged from the blanket and he squinted at the card in mild affront.

“How long have my family been planning this with you?” he asked, quietly, the card hiding most of his face.

John put his chin on Sherlock’s knee. “Oi,” he said, and Sherlock hesitantly lowered the card.

“I didn’t know until this morning, Sherlock, I promise. And I never even would have entertained any advice from Mycroft or your mother until now. It’s - I hope you know how serious a psychomatic seizure is as a symptom. And we don’t know if there’s worse to come.”

He thought of Sherlock’s full psychotic break in Culverton’s morgue, the way the man had not recognised the knife in his own hand: the sheer, wieghtless, dark possibility of the moment he had picked it up.

They could not go there again.

Suddenly John’s voice was thick, and as he struggled to speak around a surge of emotion he realised how long he had been worrying over this exact situation.

“Love - your’re so ill. You can’t carry on like this. We’ve both been trying to talk about it but we’re shit, aren’t we? I should have said this to you before. But - but so many times in my life you’ve kept me going. Through utter darkness. You have to work with me so we can do the same for you.”

The gaunt lines of Sherlock’s face crumpled and he surged forward, grabbing John’s shoulders.

“Please don’t make me do this, John. I promise I can get better, I just need you and Rosie, that’s enough I _swear_ \- I can do better.”

He started babbling, a water-line blooming around the ice of his eyes.

John sat up properly on the bed and pulled Sherlock the rest of the way into his arms, holding him to his chest, and rocking, and hating the way it reminded of him of the twenty-four hours earlier when he had to hold Sherlock through the seizure.

“I just feel like you’re in pain all the time,” John whispered into Sherlock’s shoulder, and felt the other man grip at John’s back as he shook his head.

“That’s not true, John. Please, don’t say that. I have everything I want.”

“You don’t even notice. People hurt you and you don’t even notice.” John said.

He felt dazed, the full weight of what they were discussing nearly knocking him flat. He didnt even care what he said anymore; adrenaline rushing through him as they stumbled through the conversation that had been brewing for months.

“I don’t understand. I’ve never been happier, John, is the evidence not there?” Sherlock drew back, panicky, searching John’s face.

“Isn’t it clear that you make me happy?” he asked.

They were both crying in increments, little soundless gasps.

“Of course it is. But you can be happy even when you’re ill and you can be happy when you’re in pain. It’s like you’re used to operating on that level!” John said, desperate, “I’ve been there, Sherlock. I know it can be even easier, it can be amazing, probably better than you’ve ever realised was possible.”

Sherlock was shaking his head, looking at the ceiling and the walls and the IV drip stationed by his bed, his hands ringing together in a knot against his chest before John gently took them and stilled them in his own.

“I’m honestly not sure how many more revelations I can take. We have a life now, something - I thought - was quite wonderful. Can’t we just go home and carry on?” Sherlock said, quietly. 

“What, carry on with the nightmares? With the panic attacks? And now, we don’t know if you’ll experience something like yesterday again - which, by the way, we still have no proper explanation for, we don’t even know what triggered it.”

Sherlock winced, but John felt really disconnected from consequence now, his mouth moving faster than he could control.

“Carry on going to see your sister and sorting out your family’s issues with her like it’s nothing? How long are we going to ignore the fact that being around her is fucking with your head?”

He heard himself say it and stopped, Sherlock stopped too - stopped breathing, his hands folded in a prayer shape over his mouth, catching the last tracks of tears.

“I’m sorry -“ John started.

Sherlock blinked, “Don’t be,” he said hoarsly.

John dotted his forehead, a cheekbone, the other, with light brushes of a kiss.

“No, I _am_ sorry. I’m talking about too many things at once. My point is I want you to have support and stop pretending it’s fine.”

“I didn’t know you felt that way about it.”

“That’s my fault. I should have told you. I thought it wasn’t my business because it’s your family. But you’re _my_ family. And I love you, so it is my business. I can’t just ignore that you’re hurt.”

Sherlock bit his lip, looked a bit confrontational, then sank against the headbaord - abruptly out of energy.

 _Please, please,_ John thought, _make this easy on yourself. For once. Make this easy on yourself._

Sherlock’s eyes flicked up and met his, and he nodded.

“I’ll try the medication, and I’m not saying no to the other…thing, but not right now. I want to try this without my family’s input. Other than yours, obviously. Can we leave it there?”

John nodded, smiled, “Alright.”

It wasn’t the ideal, but it was a far sight better than John’s worst expectations for the conversation.

“Good,” Sherlock said, then he sniffed and wiped his face. His hand patted John on the shoulder, affectionate. “Can I speak to Rosie?”

\- 

Rosie, the budding Gen-Z-er that she was, already had a pretty solid understanding of the phone. She couldnt hold it of course, John suspected Mrs Hudson was pressing the device to one of Rosie’s dimpled cheeks. She always helped when they wanted to get ahold of their daughter form case sout of town.

“It’s your Daddys, darling” Mrs Hudson’s voice came through softly, not directed at the phone, and then there was a crackle of static and the plunk of something (Roise’s hand, probably) knocking at the screen.

“abuh?” her voice said, brightly.

“Hi, baby” John said. He looked across the room at Sherlock and waved a thumbs up, the detective’s face lighting up in a splitting grin that John knew he mirrored.

“a _da_ ,” Rosie squealed and John held the phone slightly further from his ear with a grimace.

He circled Sherlock’s bed for a few laps while Rosie chattered absolute gibberish to him for a bit, not wanting her to feel rushed, and deeply enjoying the little pits and grooves of her speech patterns that were particular just to her.

Sherlock waited patiently, sat up against the pillows, rasing his eyebrows in good humour when John gestured helplessly at the stream of noise coming from the other end of the line.

“Mhm..you want to tell Sherlock about it?” John managed to cut in eventually.

She certainly caught ear of Sherlock’s name, if the answering screech was anything to do with it. Sherlock stopped scratching at the cannula on top of his hand and looked up.

Now surely deaf in one ear, John mumbled “Ok, talk to Sherlock, yeah, yep- now,” and nearly got clipped in the face when Sherlock lunged forward with grabby hands quicker than the speed of light.

Phone in hand, Sherlock sat crossed leg atop the blankets and cleared the last of the hoarseness and the weeping residues out of his throat.

“Salut,” he said, accent swift and immaculate, “Comment vas-tu, Watson?”

John couldnt hear the reply but whatever it was made Sherlock beam. The man raised a fist to lips and pressed to try and quell his smile, but stopped and turned it to John instead.

 _She’s O-k._ The detecitve mouthed to John, and John’s heart flared like static.

 _Of course she is_ \- he thought - _you’re the one we should be worrying about, silly git._

Instead John made a teacup of his hand with his pinky finger and moved it in a little tipping gesture: Tea? Sherlock’s nose scrunched up and he shook his head, he hated the vending machine stuff. John rolled his eyes, drew a C with his forefinger and mouthed the rest: Costa?

Sherlock brightened and nodded, and then abruptly flopped down onto his back and said, “Interesting song choice, Rosie, we’ll perhaps have to start you on a precussion within the next five months.”

“That sounds peaceful,” John called over his shoulder, and caught Sherlock pursing his lips in a kiss in his direction. He pretened to catch it with his hand, then laughed and left the room.


	8. Chapter 8

John took Sherlock home that evening. Sherlock brought with him a small, white paper bag of small, white cardboard boxes, with small, white tablets inside. A parting gift from the hospital: each one dosed to a level that was supposed to amend the askew beats of the seratonin-dopamine chemicals in Sherlock's head.

At the door, Rosie asked to be lifted in french, and as a reward Sherlock kept her on his shoulders for the entirety of dinner, passing sticks of cheese and cucumber up to her laughing mouth as he and John shared a tray of Mrs Hudson’s leftover chilli, with hearty glasses of red wine.

Sherlock took Rosie to her room to read, and John slipped into their bathroom and brushed his teeth. He filled the sink and sucked a sharp breath through his teeth when the cold water smarted against his knuckles. He wiggled his fingers and stared at the brusies starting to grow across the skin; marveled for a second at the way the same hands that had dabbed hummus off of Rosie’s tiny elbows earlier, had been beaten black and blue against Andrew Harken’s skull a few days before that.

All because Andrew had pressed Sherlock a little too aggressively into the ground - the fucker.

“And I’d do it again,” John said under his breath, shooting a dark smirk at himself in the mirror.

Hygiene done, he opened the cupboard and picked up a little box that they usually used for stuff like cotton buds and floss. He emptied it into a different basket and re-filled it with three of Sherlock’s Sertralin trays, tucking the flat sides of the packets in neat rows and placing the tray next to the toothbrushes, in plain sight.

“That’s very brazen,” Sherlock said. John saw that he was being watched from the doorway. The tall man had removed his shirt and was in plain pajama bottoms, one hip cocked against the doorframe and his arms crossed over his thin chest.

“Would you want me or Rosie, or Mrs H to hide something we needed?”

Sherlock smirked, “None of you would be able to hide it from me - but I see your point.”

John walked over, took Sherlock’s sharp hips in his hands and did a short waltz move. Sherlock rolled his eyes, no doubt at his partner’s lacking form, but wrapped his arms loosely around John’s shoulders, resting his chin on the doctor’s head. He joined in John’s dancing a little, actually doing the choregoraphy properly, humming a concerto of something under his breath.

John moved closer, pressed them chest to chest. He ran his fingers up and down Sherlock’s spine, then cupped his palms over the wingspans of Sherlock’s back, feeling the bumps and ravines of knotted scar tissue. He breathed in against Sherlock’s sternum, tasting his cologne and the deeper, normal smell. “You’re my favourite person,” he said, and Sherlock laughed.

“Flirting,” he said, John feeling the vibration of his voice rumbling through his skin. He nodded and kissed the divot of the bullet hole in Sherlock’s chest, just level with his chin.

Sherlock shuddered, “Rosie’s asleep. Can I shower?” he said.

John would probably want the same thing if he had been plonked on an MRI table and a medical bed for a day. But right now all he wanted was to be close.

“If I join you?” he said.

Sherlock kissed the top of his - “Yep.”

John undressed while Sherlock brushed his teeth, then got in the tub first, testing the water till it was warm. There was a shuck of pajamas hitting the floor, and Sherlock’s frizzy hair appeared round the glass door as he wriggled his way in. He grinned manically through his fringe at John as the older man laughed at Sherlock’s deer looking limbs crashing against the tiled walls.

Sherlock caught John’s elbow with a knee, mumbled what sounded like _“aoup-sorry”_ and face planted into John’s chest, where his burst of energy seemed to abandon him and he happily stooped still.

“I think I can see your cock through the steam,” he said, thoughtfully, voice muffled by skin as he bit John’s shoulder — and John’s head lolled back.

The water was still running, the door and window of the bathroom closed. The heat moved around in a clinging mist that slowly intensified. John moved the showerhead slightly out of their way and droplets splattered against the glass and cavorted down the paintwork.

Sherlock went to his knees in a smooth drop and moved his face slightly further into John’s crotch. He pressed his tongue to the burgeoning side of John’s erection.

“Sherlock,” John exhaled, mouth hanging open as he breathed. He suddenly caught a trickle of water underfoot and slipped down onto his back as Sherlock leaned out of the way. They laughed, the repositioning unplanned but not unappreciated - clearly - as Sherlock sat up and onto John’s lap, rocking - once - twice - on John’s erection with his arse.

John kissed him. Opened his mouth around Sherlock’s thicker bottom lip, and licked the sweetness there. The kiss turned harder when Sherlock whimpered and let him in further, until John was tasting the roof of Sherlock’s mouth, the insides of his cheeks, sucking on his tongue like it was a sip of something fizzy.

He leant back and looked. Sherlock’s eyes were closed, his hair twisting around his narrow face in the damp. His dark eyelashes stood out violently against the pinking at the top of his cheekbones. He smiled, as he knew John was looking, and reached forward blindly, catching John’s face between his cold hands and stroking his thumbs downwards, soothing John’s temples where his skin had started to burn with arousal. Sherlock curled his forefingers around John’s ears, and pursed his lips in a playful phantom kiss. His curly hairline was a bit sweaty too, hands shaking a little against John’s face - all the beautiful shapes of his features making John want to bite him.

He did slightly, touching his teeth to Sherlock’s adams apple to make him jump in his lap.

“Just get on properly, why don't you,” John said.

“As you wish,” Sherlock whispered, then opened his eyes and gently kissed the tip of John’s nose. John’s face scrunched automatically, his chest hurting the way it did whenever Sherlock smiled like that.

They half pounced on eachother: Sherlock briefly distracted by John’s shoulders and lapping mouthfuls of water out of his collarbones, John getting one hand into Sherlock’s curls and grabbing on, gripping the taller man’s wrists together and holding them over his head to tug his body closer, without moving his mouth from Sherlock’s.

By the time they’d separated from the open kiss, the shower surface were completely steamed up, rendering the world outside in streaky, indistinct strips of light and shape. Sherlock had been rubbing John’s cock, first with the inside of his thighs and then with his hand, while John bit at his nipples. When he used a hand to balance himself against the door while John gripped at his legs, there was a sticky residue of pre-come and sweat smeared against the glass that quickly started to run in the water.

Eyes on that handprint, John unseeingly moved his fingers into Sherlock’s open mouth and let him suck, waited until they were soaked enough and then dragged his own hand down one lithe, trembling torso, to the opening between Sherlock’s legs.

“Okay?” John asked.

In answer Sherlock just nodded and brushed a wet, jet-black curl out of his eyes. As John put a couple of fingers in him, he wrapped his long arms around John’s neck and tucked himself down against John’s body, ear pressed to where John’s heart was hammering at his chest.

John adjusted his wrist and pressed further in, felt Sherlock’s exhale gutturally against his skin.

“Hang on, sweet,” John said, and crooked his finger upwards from inside Sherlock’s hole. Sherlock moaned louder and higher, voice petering out into a whine as he dragged his bottom lip against John’s skin. He wriggled a hand between them to hold John’s cock again, and they both shivered in pleasure. The air inside the bathroom was sweltering, the plastic tub squeaking slightly as John flexed his arm harder and harder, pushing up and in.

They were both hard, Sherlock’s hole open and submitting to John’s eventual three fingers as they came and went.

Sherlock leant back on John’s lap and levelled their faces, both of their hands pausing as their kisses came frantic and panting.

“Can we do it another way?” Sherlock panted, when they separated for air. “It’s just”-

“Your back?” John said.

“Yeah,” Sherlock winced apologetically, and John stroked a thumb over his brow till it settled.

“Course. ‘Course it’s fine. Is it the bending, you want to lie down on top?”

“Please, yeah.”

They ended up rolling over carefully, longways across the tub, horizontal, so the scars on Sherlock’s spine wouldn’t sting when he bent too far like he did in John’s lap.

Instead it was John on his back, with Sherlock flat on top of him, chest to chest, eyes open and calmly looking into one another’s as John gently spread Sherlock’s thighs as wide open as possible with his own stockier, darker legs, and guided his cock inside the hole in between.

‘There?” John said quietly, through the hissing of water hitting the side of the door.

“Unh, yeah, keep it - yes, there.”

“Good. I love it when you feel good,”

“You always make me feel good.”

Their movements were shallow at first, Sherlock pushing back in increments, riding on the tip of John’s cock while they kissed and spoke for a bit about the things they liked about each other’s bodies and wiped sweat and showerspray out from each other’s eyes.

When they wanted to come, Sherlock sat up straight and bounced up and down a few times, making John’s abdomen burn so hot with the tight feeling around his cock that he brought Sherlock’s hand to his mouth and sucked on the knuckles.

Their palms squeezed together as they both started to cry out loudly to each other - John’s noises deep and harsh, Sherlock’s high pitched and breathy, mostly just single syllable - until John let go of Sherlock’s hands to reach up and hold his hips.

Using Sherlock’s delicate hipbones for leverage, he lifted the bottom half of him and slammed him back down, feeling his cock bottom out against Sherlock’s arse. It felt so good he whited out a bit behind the eyes, and only realised he had done it a few more times for the next minute or so because the shower door was slightly rocking along with them, the air too thick to breathe, and Sherlock was pleading. His voice as shrill as he had ever heard it and whispering hotly against John’s ear — for John to keep going, there, right there, don’t stop, come inside me, I’m yours.

I’m yours.

John did come, and then made his partner come a few minutes afterwards by turning him over, lifting Sherlock’s legs up, ducking his head and and licking the semen out of his hole - pushing his tongue in and out of him until Sherlock half wept his way through an orgasm, fingers never once tightening in their ever-gentle hold over the back of John’s head.

But what John liked just as much was when they held each other afterwards. His arms clasping Sherlock as Sherlock gasped damply against his chest. They lay like that until the light faded outside the window and the fog crept back into the crevices of the shower as the water cooled.

They left the bathroom floor soaked and the shower mat twisted. Later, in bed, they both said I love you with the hundreds of patterns their fingers made on each other’s palms for hours more, foreheads lolling onto each other’s in sleep.

-

At 4:00AM John woke up hungry. It wasn’t surpising to him, as his stomach always complained after the rough few days of a frantic case. He had been too worried about Sherlock in the hopsital to eat anything other than a cereal bar.

With gentle hands, he moved Sherlock slowly off of his chest and settled him, still sleeping, on the mattress.

He pulled a sweatshirt over his head and plodded into the kitchen, stopping at Rosie’s room along the way and snickering at her dainty baby snores.

In the kitchen, he stood barefoot in the slither of light from the fridge, ripping strips of quorn ham straight from the packet and throwing back handfuls of kettle crisps, enjoying himself immensely.

He balanced a mug of tap-water in the crook of his elbow and made his way blind torward their bedroom. He narrowly avoided spilling water everywhere when his toe had a shocking collision with some lego. He counted to ten and breathed some choice words into the dark instead.

He pushed the door of their bedroom open slowly, feeling sleep beckon him again at the back of his mind.

Sherlock was sat up, facing the far wall.

John whispered, “Oh sorry, thought I was being quiet.”

No reply.

The first prickle of unease started at John’s nape.

He moved closer, placing the mug down on the side table. He placed a knee on the other side of the bed and sat on the edge, watching Sherlock closely.

Sherlock didnt react at all to his approach. From where John sat he could see the other man’s skin emitted a low glow out of the gloom, his entire body glinting with sweat. His chest was rising and falling in tiny rapid movements, but his jaw was taught and shut; he was hyperventialing while barely making a sound.

John stood, “Sherlock, it’s John with you, can you hear me?” he said, lowly.

The darkness and quiet of the bedroom pressed down on them. Sherlock started to tremble.

“Please not again, not happening to him again,” John muttered to himself, before grabbing a pillow and moving it to the floor closest to Sherlock’s side. He knelt on it so he could lean into Sherlock’s eyesight without sitting immediately in the line of fire if he lashed out.

Sherlock was shaking fiercely now, even his teeth were chattering. His sharp breaths rattled out in stops and starts. His eyes were staring right out into the dark, with such potent intent of target that John almost wanted to check if something was actually there, staring back.

John slowly leant closer, and risked pressing his hand gently on Sherlock’s bicep. When the other man didn’t flinch away, John slid his palm and held the nape of Sherlock’s neck, rested his forehead against the side of Sherlock’s.

“It’s okay, you’re at home, you’re in our flat. Nothing’s wrong, you can breathe,”

And he drew long, open breaths in as an example, flattening his other hand against Sherlock’s chest to try and get it to stop spasming.

Sherlock made a low noise and his eyelids flickered slightly toward John.

“Breathe through it,” John said, waiting with no small amount of fear for the moment Sherlock might tense up further and start to seize.

Instead, after a long, strangled few minutes, Sherlock exhaled shakily in time with John, then inhaled.

He still didn’t wake up though. He was staring into the shadows at the foot of the bed, and when he had caught half of his breath back he lifted his finger and pointed.

John followed the direction of Sherlock’s trembling finger and looked at the shadows. He saw them for what they were: a desk chair, a wardrobe, Sherlock’s stack of books. But still, his heart was pounding.

Clear as day, Sherlock spoke out loud - “She’s in my room.”

His chest shuddered against John’s hand.

“No one’s in our room, love. It’s just us. It’s John.”

“Tell her to go,” Sherlock said, his words slurring together slightly in sleep.

John blinked rapidly and cleared his throat. “Ok, Ok, I told her, she’s going, she’s leaving, you can sleep.”

He did the same thing with Harry once, when they shared bunk beds. She talked in her sleep, and John had got a kick out of playing along once he realised he could send her dreams in different directions with the sound of his voice.

But it was different, now.

He hated this, so much.

Sherlock started to pant in frustration and anxiety. “No, she won’t,” he said. His hands jumped about, clutching at John’s hand and his own hair and his own forerams over and over.

“She what, she won’t go?”

“No, she keeps coming in,” Sherlock whined low in his throat, “she’s put tacs down. Why aren’t you looking?”

As John stared, Sherlock grabbed at his own arms and raking his nails down them, shaking all over, dragging his nails along again.

“Ah, no” John said, “nope, we’re not doing that’” he slipped around and put his legs either side of Sherlock’s, caging the man in. He used his hand on Sherlock’s chest to push him down flat, finding the resistence weak, and wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s torso. He crossed his ankles over Sherlock’s legs to stop them kicking and held tight to his arms to stop him from scratching himself anymore.

Sherlock wriggled a bit, breath speeding up again, still, somehow, unaware.

About then John realised that was a bit deeper than a nightmare.

“She’s put tacs down but you won’t look,” Sherlock said, to no one in particular.

“Why’s that then?” John asked, genuinely curious.

“D’no, um she - ” Sherlock glazed over a bit, shaking quietly as his slipped further from his verbal ability.

“Shush, shush.” John soothed him when his breathing got rough again.

Sherlock whispered something in response and John leant his head against him to hear better. “Hm?” he said.

“On my bed, in my arms,” Sherlock said, again.

“There’s nothing on your arms, Sherlock, stop it - don’t - don’t scratch.”

“She did!” Sherlock snapped breathlessly, voice rising.

When it clicked, John thought faintly that he might be sick with horror, but he tightened his arms around Sherlock and spoke into his hair. “You’re just dreaming, your safe.”

“She did, look,” Sherlock groaned, sweating even more profusely in his attempt to get his arms free and dig at his forearms. He and John were both effectively soaked now.

“Just breathe Sherlock, I won’t let her do that, ok? Just breathe.”

They argued back and forth for what felt like ages. Sherlock became increasingly hysterical until John was worried for his oxygen levels. Eventually the light of the sunrise arrived in thin beams through the blinds and chased away a few of the shadows, and with John’s gentle words a constant in his ear, Sherlock gradually quietened down until he slumped into another dead sleep on top of John.

Once he was sure Sherlock was out, John stood and paced round the room, hair stood up in clumps from his head, rubbbing his jaw in thought. His skin prickled in gooseumps as he thought over all he’d heard. This was different even to the nightmares. The threads of things Sherlock had never even nearly mentioned in their most intimate conversations were suddenly unravelling out of thepatchwork impression they had of his life.

Half of John wanted to pull it all loose; until all the secrets, all the lies, came unstuck. Half of him never wanted to hear or see of Eurus Holmes’ name again.

He downed the cup of water he’d brought in and rolled onto his back, thinking about what morning would bring and reaching over the blankets to lightly run one finger up and down the cooling sweat on Sherlock’s bare back.

“I hate you,” John murmered, eyes on the ceiling, “I know you’re not really in here, but I do - I hate you so much.”

He could have screamed it in her face. Not that he’d get anywhere near her or her cell again. Not that she’d notice if he did.

The thing to do, was to be useful, his half awake brain concluded. If Sherlock was watching anyone else go through this, he would examine the facts, collect the evidence. The case of the re-appearing memories. The case of Pandora’s proverbial box.

He must make like his other half and be the brain, not just the heart.

That’s why, as the first bird calls started to rise outside of the window, and cabs rolled up and down to airport pickups along the central London streets, John Watson was sat up in bed with a notepad on his knee and a pen between his teeth — Sherlock conked out, legs akimbo, deep asleep next to him.

Slowly, blinking through the dregs of tiredness, John started to write.

_1._

**_CATEGORY:_ ** _PSYCHOMATIC SEIZURE_

**_TRIGGER:_ ** _UNKNOWN (EST. STRESS, HIGH THREAT LEVELS, WITNESS OF DEATH OF ANDREW HARKEN)_

**_CONTEXT:_ ** _NA_

_2._

**_CATEGORY:_ ** _LUCID DREAM / FLASHBACK_

**_TRIGGER:_ ** _UNKNOWN_

**_CONTEXT:_ ** _E.H UNWANTED PRESENCE IN BEDROOM. MENTION OF TACS -_

_MENTION OF INJURY INFLICTED BY E.H. WITH TACS._

_“IN BED. IN ARMS”_

_POSSIBLE PHANTOM PAINS IN ARMS. HIGH IRRITABILITY AND PANIC._

John went to put the cap on the pen, hesitated and then quickly added at the bottom of the page,

_It’s just a start. Feel free to add to -- as and when._

_We will get there._ _I’m with you._

_Yours always,_

_John. H. Watson_


End file.
